Unreal City
by foxontherun
Summary: The detectives try to solve the murder of a breast-cancer patient, but Bobby uncovers something a lot more personal than he was looking for. B/A. *COMPLETE*
1. Chapter 1

Unreal City,

_Disclaimer: Yeah, I don't own them, but that doesn't mean I can't play with them!_

_Unreal City,_

_Under the brown fog of a winter dawn, /_

The girl playing the piano was just right, Bobby had decided, after his third scotch. She was a fairly talented jazz improviser, a small brunette. Her fingers moved lightly across the keys, small oval nails filed down. Her face looked far away, concentrating on some distant point in her memory. Shades of Charlie Parker in the chord changes. Yes, she was perfect. All he wanted, after all, was to get laid. Outside the window of the small, dark club the neon lights painted the fallen snow bright against the street at night.

After her set, some time later, she came and leaned against the bar, next to him. He was on his fifth scotch by then, and a good ways towards being drunk. It took a lot for him to get drunk, given his size, but he was getting there. As she waited for her drink, her fingers tapped on the counter. Even, odd, even. Like morse code. She shot him a quick sideways glance and he reciprocated, giving her a small half smile. Sometimes it seemed too easy for him, his quick behavioral analysis affording him deep insight into whomever he had his sights on. With girls, it was just a matter of sizing them up and morphing himself into exactly what they wanted.

This girl, he noticed, had a slight facial tick. It seemed important, at the time. They talked smoothly, about art, about movies, and music. She was a good conversationalist. Educated. And those hands. He imagined what she could do with those well-trained hands.

Around midnight, and she was pushing him against the wall outside of the club, running her fingers down the front of his suit, unbuttoning him. He was achingly hard, kissing her neck, her jawline, her pelvis grinding into his.

They entered her apartment in a jumble. She was laughing because he had hit his head on her doorframe, had to duck to get into her bedroom, her entire apartment built to accommodate someone smaller, more compact. Then her hands were on him again, pushing him down against the bed, and he rolled over on top of her, careful about distributing his weight, not wanting to hurt her, but at the same time, maybe wanting to hurt her just a little. She was so small.

Awhile later, he came, moaning against her neck, and she squeezed herself against him. Her name was…what…Annie? No, Ashley.

/

They find her halfway inside the vestibule of her apartment. She looks pale, unnaturally thin. Even in death she looks sick, like she is still suffering.

Alex Eames watches her partner in mild consternation as he hunches over the body, his eyes wandering over her with that complete focus that he has while he's working. His body is contorted, knees jutting out, doubled up in that familiar way that she finds oddly endearing, comforting. But something has been different about him, this morning. No, she is lying to herself. Ever since his suspension, that terrible time he spent in the psych ward, he has been distant, withdrawing silently into himself, pushing her away.

He sniffs at the woman's hands.

"Uh…that smell. Resin." He says, looking up at her. "And these calluses. This woman was a musician. A…violinist." He gestures at her wasted body. "She had a disease, probably cancer. Her hair is thin, falling out." He stands up, unfolding his long body with causual grace, and moves over to the kitchen counter. He pulls three prescription bottles out of the cabinet.

"Doxorubicin. Temoxifien. Hydromorphone. Breast cancer medications."

Eames bends down. "She's had breast surgery," he says, not looking at her. "Double mastectomy. Look at the concentration of the knife wounds."

The wounds are clustered around her chest, forming a rough double helix. The edges are ragged, the blood pooling on her left side, staining her white blouse. Eames nudges her shirt aside a little, and shudders, biting her lip. Her empathy comes suddenly in a strong wave. Who would kill a woman who was already dying? She watches Bobby move around the crime scene, gently touching the photographs on the fridge door.

"Eames," he says "look at this." He points to one of the photographs. The woman is smiling. Looks healthy—glowing, even. There is a man beside her—tall, bearded, holding her hand. They are both laughing into the camera. They look happy. Bobby flips over the photo. "Nantucket, 1999. G."

"G" she says. "this woman's name was Zoey Mitchell."

"This G," he says "a boyfriend."

"No," she says, pointing to his hand in the photo. "Fiancee?" The ring is there, the sun glinting off it. Her hand is hidden in his.

He finds her address book on the kitchen table. "G.." he mutters softly to himself. "Gordon, Dennis." He taps the book with one finger. "his name has been crossed out. Only a phone number, no address." He looks around the apartment, eyes slightly narrowed. Alex knows what's bothering him.

"There's no evidence of a man ever living here," she says. "No extra toothbrush in the bathroom, twin bed, not big enough for two…" her voice trails off as she catches her partner's eyes. He is angry. His mouth is set in a grim line. He moves swiftly, and is outside the apartment before she can take a step.

"Lets go find this 'G'" he calls, already on his way to the elevator.

She has to run to catch up with him.

/

Bobby Goren has been feeling uneasy all day. He watches his partner when he's sure she's not looking. Sometimes he can't stand looking at her, it's too much for him. He's been fighting with himself for a long time, not willing to admit how he feels about her. Her jawline, the swing of her hips as she walks. He yearns for her. He makes himself be cool, professional around her, and when she says something that makes him laugh, his heart beats too fast, and the smile on his face feels like a wound.

The phone company turned up an address for Dennis Gordon. SoHo.

As they knock on the door, the hear scrambling from somewhere inside, and the unmistakeable muffled sound of a window sliding open.

"He's running," shouts Goren, as they draw their guns. They break the door down, and see the back of the man's shirt as he struggles out the window. It takes Goren only a few strides to get to the window, and he grabs the man's arm, dragging him back into the room, and slamming him facedown on the coffee table. The man is easily as tall as him, and outweighs him by at least twenty pounds, but Goren handles him as if he were a straw doll. Eames feels a sudden, unexpected rush of desire for him, for his easy strength. She feels a flush rise on her cheeks.

"What..what did I do?" stammers the man, face still pressed against the table. "I didn't do nothin"

"Then why did you run?" Eames asks, as Goren snaps on the cuffs. Once upright, they can see his face,. He's sweating, and his pupils are the size of quarters, glassy and flickering from side to side.

"Hey, now," she says, "Looks like somebody's been having a party in here." The man looks at her sullenly, his lip twitching. "So what's your poison, Dennis, huh? Crack? Meth?"

"I don't know what you're talking about, dollface," he spits. She sees Goren tense up.

"That's _detective_ Eames, Dennis" he says softy into the man's ear, getting close. The man shifts uncomfortably under his intensity.

"Ok, ok, _detective _Eames," he says, "look, I dunno why you guys are here but I keep telling you, I didn't do shit. Plus, my name's not Dennis."

The partners exchange a glance.

/

"His name is Chuck Worster,"

They are standing on the other side of the interrogation mirror with Deakins and Carver, watching the man fidget. Deakins shakes his head.

"So you went after this guy and all he's guilty of is criminal trespass."

"He was living at the suspect's house, and we found a pill bottle in his posession belonging to Zoey Mitchell. Dilaudid. We found the same prescription in her apartment." Goren is pacing back and forth restlessly. He pauses and rubs the back of his neck. "When we asked him where he'd gotten it he said he'd found it in the apartment, but the only prints on it were his…his and hers."

Carver frowns. "It's not enough to hold him. I can charge him with the trespass, but he'll post bail by tonight. If you want to keep him, you need to find me something, but quick."

Goren turns back to look through the mirror. Eames joins him, looking up at him, waiting.

"Maybe…" he says, shifting his weight, "maybe he isn't just a random squatter."

"You think he knows Dennis?"

"I think maybe he knows more than he's letting on."

"That wouldn't be too hard," Eames says, shaking her head.

/

"Look," Chuck Worster says impatiently, "I already told ya. I found the door open and a pile of mail a foot high. This guy's flown the coop, right? So I decided to make myself at home. No harm, no foul."

"No harm," Goren murmers, fixing the guy with his eyes. He abruptly stands up. "How did you happen to be in the apartment building in the first place, Chuck?" He says, "a guy like you…" his voice trails off.

"A guy like me what?" Chuck shifts around in his chair angrily, trying to track Goren's movements. "I gotta right to be in nice places. I'm no bum."

"No bum. Just a junkie. Your file has at least eight priors for…" Goren flips through a file, "assault. Posession. Posession. Attempted rape…posession," He drags a chair around next to Chuck. "Not exactly the million-dollar penthouse pedigree."

"So I've had some problems. But I know what a million bucks looks like. Probably better than either of you."

"I'm sure you do, Chuck," Goren says, resting his chin on his arms. "We looked up your parents. Susan and Richard Worster of….Fifth ave…St Moritz, Monaco…"

Chuck looks sullen again. "Yeah, so? I got rich parents. Is that a crime now?"

"No, no" Eames puts in, "but Susan Worster just happens to have a sister. Bethany Worster. Or, that was her maiden name. Do you know what her name is now, Chuck?"

He looks down at the floor.

"Bethany Gordon." She continues, "wife of two kids. Lily and _Dennis_. Isn't that quite the coincidence? That you would stumble into your cousin's apartment without knowing it?"

Chuck grits his teeth. "Look, I'm not saying any more until I get a lawyer," he says, and then clams up.

/

Chapter 2 coming soon!


	2. Con Man

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 2

"Well, the mother was a whole lot of help," Eames says, sounding disgruntled as she slides into the drivers seat of the car. "Been living in Switzerland for the past six years with her husband, who handles asset management at Credit Suisse. She says, and I quote, 'I gave that boy up for a lost cause when he was 18, and good riddance.' She hasn't seen him since. There's no way she's covering for him, not with her money-bags of a husband to worry about."

"The sister won't be much more helpful," Goren says as he hands her a coffee. "She died of Krabbe's disease at age 9."

"Great," Eames says, taking a sip of coffee and concentrating on the road. "Good thing I didn't get my hopes up."

/

Back at Dennis Gordon's apartment, and Eames and Goren are staring at the bookshelves lining the bedroom. Hundreds of books, stacked from floor to ceiling, overflowing from cabinets, piled on the nightstand.

"Principles of Particle Physics, Patterns of Culture, Intraductory Conversational Chinese…" Eames picks up a pile of books from the floor. "Jeez, Bobby, he's worse than you are." He laughs softly, and turns to run his fingers over a line of books.

"Camus, Henry David Thoreau, Dostoyevsky, Kierkegaard, Hemingway," Goren shakes his head. "He's got all the classics here."

"Jack of all trades," Eames muses.

"And master of none," he finishes. "It just doesn't add up. It's like he compiled this library from a list. 'How to be an intellectual.' But there's no depth here. Only one book per author. The most popular, most well known book." He pauses, "He's a dilettante. He wants to seem cultured, well-read." He frowns, shakes his head again, as if to shake off a pesky thought.

"What, Bobby?" Alex asks, aware of the spectacular leaps of logic that her partner's mind takes.

"Nothing," he says, turning away from her, "for a moment I just…" She looks at him, but he doesn't say anything, just walks out of the bedroom, into the office.

Sifting through the office, they find very little personal affects. No pictures, no computer. It's all very impersonal. She opens a drawer.

"Goren," she says, hauling out a stack of cards. "Business cards. Hundreds of them"

He takes the first one off the stack.

"Dan Matthews," he says, "Executive VP of Internal Affairs, Stingray Management, L.L.C"

"Walter Donovan," she reads the next, "Software Architect."

"Communications Officer"

"Creative Director"

They flip through the cards. Each one with a different name, a different occupation.

"This guy enjoys his fantasies," says Goren. "He has no direction, so he makes up alternate realities for himself."

"I wonder if one of his fantasies was 'vicious murderer,'" says Eames. Goren narrows his eyes, looking off into space.

"He steals these identities to impress people. His mother dismissed him at an early age, he was probably neglected as a child. He's trying to make up for that by earning the admiration of everyone he meets. He gets off on the attention, the respect they give him."

"Well, he must be good at it. Look at this place." Eames runs a hand over the curve of the chair she's sitting on"

"It's his one talent," Goren says, looking around the well-furnished room. "He may not be a Software Architect, but he's an extremely good con artist." He turns to look at the business cards. "He stole these cards from people he's met. If he's so impressive, maybe one of them remembers him.

"For God's sake, Bobby, there's got to be at least 200 cards here." She shakes her head in frustration. He gets up and motions to her.

"It looks like we have some phonecalls to make," he says, and follows her out of the apartment.

/

The day is dragging on. She has made at least fifty phonecalls, and a dead end on each line. At 4:30, she looks at the clock and makes a frustrated noise. Goren, on the other side of the desk, looks up at her.

"Nothing," she says, rubbing her eyes with one hand. He shakes his head.

"I still have fifty more cards here, " he says. "You can take off, if you want. It's Friday night." He looks at his partner.

"I don't have a hot date, or anything," she says with a half-smile. "Just sitting in front of the TV with the dog."

He smiles at her, trying to ignore his slight feeling of relief. _Come on Bobby, what does it matter if she has a date or not. _There is a long silence, and a subtle tension fills the space between them. He lowers his eyes from her, feeling awkward, and silly.

"Ok," he says, after a long pause, "more phonecalls it is." And he laughs at the look on her face. She gets up for coffee, and he watches her go, trying not to look at her ass as she walks away. _For god's sake, Bobby, get a grip._

_/_

It is exactly 8:30, when the look on his face tells her he's got a lead. He's on the phone with someone, and he gestures at her.

"420 West 4th. Ok, got it," he says into the phone, and scribbles something down onto his notepad. "Osso Bucco," he says, "3:00. We'll be there. Thank you, Mr. Anderson." He looks at her, after he hangs up the phone. "Mr. Kevin Anderson owns a restaurant in the west village. He remembers a man come in, fitting out description, but he won't tell me more over the phone. We have a meeting with him tomorrow."

"Thank god for that," she says, stretching out her arms. "Can we go home now?" Goren looks at her, debating. She raises her eyebrows at him. "Yes?" she says.

"Would you.." he starts, and then stalls, his mind floundering. She's still looking at him. "I mean," he says, "it's been a long day, I was wonder if you…maybe we could go get a drink somewhere. We haven't done that…" he pauses, "in a while," he finishes lamely, wishing that he hadn't asked. She flashes him a genuine smile, not hiding her pleasure at being asked.

"Sure, Bobby," she says. It's true, they haven't gone for drinks in some time. They used to, every few weeks, just go to a bar around the corner after work. They would chat about the case, and he would make her laugh. She missed it, but hadn't pressed. He had gone through a hard time, and she didn't want to intrude if she wasn't wanted. He's good at hiding his emotions, but sometimes she can sense his pain, feel his guilt eating away at him. All that anger built up towards his father, his deadbeat brother, his angst over his mother's death, all that turned inwards. She may not be a brilliant behavioral analyst, but she works side-by-side with him for countless hours, every day. There is no way she could miss the signs of a man struggling to keep himself together. She hates to see him hurting—hates the sharp pangs of sadness that hit her at unexpected moments. She wishes she could help, because even though she won't let herself admit it, his pain is her pain. She wants to hold his head and let him cry against her chest. Wants to make him see how much she loves him.

But she never will. It's a line she can't bring herself to cross, because who knows what lies on the other side? Poor, wounded Bobby Goren. She doesn't want to destroy the one thing that he holds on to. The work. Their partnership. Their friendship. The beacon of light that guides him through his own personal storm.

/

Just her luck, the bar that they end up at is having trivia night. As she watches the chagrin on Goren's face, she shakes her head with a resigned grin.

"Let's sign up," she says, dragging him towards the bar.

"Eames," he says, holding back "no way in hell."

"But…come on Goren, you'll bulldoze these jerks. They don't stand a chance!" He shakes his head.

"Believe me, Eames, you don't want me to play," he says, pulling her towards a seat in the back. "I'd rather watch."

"Yeah, and sit back here and answer all the questions anyway," she shoves him lightly on the shoulder. "At least if we win we get free tequila shooters."

He raises his eyebrows at her. "I never pegged you for a tequila drinker," he says. "Maybe I _will_ sign up, after all."

This earns him another shove. This one harder.

"Forget it," she says, "you'll be buying me tequila shooters by the end of the night anyways."

"Not if you want to show up for work tomorrow."

She watches him get up and make his way towards the bar. God, she loves the way his body moves, the intensity of his presence. People move out of his way without having to be asked, his size alone being enough to disperse the crowd, which then quickly forms again behind him. _Enough lusting over your partner, Alex. Quit it_, she tells herself firmly, and graciously accepts her martini as he sits down across from her, scotch in hand.

/


	3. Spilled Drink

/

/

He watches the two detectives from his spot at the bar. The big detective says something, and the woman with him, a looker, laughs and looks down at her drink. Stupid bitch. They were all the same. Tossing their hair, laughing. He bites his lip, remember the phonecall he had gotten earlier that day. From _her_.

_That detective_, she had said, _Goren_. _He's too smart for his own good. We gotta lose him._

He had laughed at her, which was a mistake. _Are you kidding? I'm not gonna waste some police officer just cause he's sniffing around our business._

Her voice had come back, tight and frigid. _I didn't say to waste him, Denny, I'll take care of it. But his partner, she's going to be a problem. They're attatched._

_So we unattatch them, _he had said_, I can probably do that._

_I doubt it. She's your type, but she's not going to go for you._

_Why not? Girls love me. _

_I know, I know, you moron. But not this one._

He had tensed_. So what do you want me to do?_

_I need you to do a little recon for me,_ she had said. _We need to break him. _

_How?_

She had laughed at him. Deep and low. He found the sound both sexy and frightening. He'd never admit to it, but she frighened him_. You're so smart._ She had said, _you figure it out._

After the phonecall he had punched a hole in the wall. Laughing at him. At _him_. All of them. God, he hated them. He had lit a cigarette and sat in front of the computer. Research. He was pretty good at it. By 1pm he had a plan.

/

"Amylase," he says under his breath, as the trivia teams buzz around them, and she gives him a look. He shrugs. "My biology teacher was pretty thorough."

"I'll bet." His eyes crinkle a little at the corners. She looks away again, feeling a little frisson of pleasure run through her. It just feels so good to be back to some semblance of normalcy. A laugh, a little thing, but so uncommon lately.

He studies her profile. He knows she doesn't like when he analyzes her behavior, but he can't help it. He's made so many mistakes. Sometimes when he looks at her he can't believe she's still sitting there. He doesn't deserve to have so many second chances. She looks happy. He sighs, and tips back the last of his drink. He wants her to be happy, that's pretty much _all _he wants these days. Everything has been so tense. Even a small upset might tip the carefully balanced scales of their relationship.

Their relationship.

He isn't aware that his psychological examination of his partner had turned into a physical one before he caught himself staring at the way that her hair brushes against her collarbones. The softness of her skin. He shifts uncomfortably as she looks up, turning to look across the room.

"John Cassavetes," he says, in response to the trivia master and she glares at him, hiding a smile.

"I bet your film teacher was thorough, too," she said, and he darts a quick look at her.

"Actually, I had a crush on her," he said, "so I didn't pay too much attention.

"Oh yeah?" She raises an eyebrow. He grins.

"I was young once, you know," he says, "and she was—" he bites himself off_. She was exactly my type_, he was about to say. That was more personal than he had meant to get. Also, it might provoke an uncomfortable conversation about what his type exactly was. Petite blonde smart-asses?

She is about to ask him what he was going to say, when her lap is suddenly drenched. She looks up wildly, as the man who has just bumped into their table starts to reach down.

He says "I'm so sorry!" This guy is tall and slim, with dark hair. He leans down, brushing against her, to grab a napkin. His arm brushes against the swell of her breast, and she leans backward. Her partner tenses.

"It's ok," Bobby says, his voice tight. "We got it." The guy straightens, and apologizes again.

"I'm so clumsy!" He says, "I was just—can I help?" He picks up her spilled drink glass and looks around the room, distracted. Bobby sees his eyes fix on a woman walking towards the door.

"It's fine," Alex says, and the guy makes a beeline towards the door, following the girl. Bobby shakes his head and heads to the bar for more napkins as Alex sighs and mops at her ruined suit.

/

Outside the bar, the tall guy pockets a few twenties.

"Hey, if you guys ever need any more quality work done…" he says, laughing, as the blonde who hands him the money smiles.

/

"Well, that was a blast," she says a little later as they leave the bar, her shirt and pants still damp and uncomfortable.

"I'm sorry," he says, a hangdog expression on his face, trailing behind her. She looks over at him, frustrated.

"It's not _your_ fault, Bobby," she says.

"I know, but it was my idea…" he trails off. He asks her out for drinks, she ends up pissed off and dripping. Just great.

"I had a _good_ time," she says forcefully, further irritated by his insitence on blaming himself for everything. "Until that jackass bumped into me," _and then felt me up. _She rustles around in her bag and then stops walking. "Oh wonderful," she says, "I can't find my car keys." She pats down her pockets.

"What?" He's next to her quickly.

"My car keys, Bobby," she says, worriedly, "they were in my purse."

He takes the purse from her and takes a few things out. "Did you leave them in the bar?" he asks.

"I don't think so," she says, "I never touched my purse in the bar." They both stop walking as they reach the car.

"It's unlocked," Bobby points out, his voice quiet.

"I'm sure I locked it," she says, sounding uncertain.

"So am I," he says. Then he peers into one of the windows. "Uh, Eames…"

She looks in the car.

Its blood. And there's a lot of it.

/

_This chapter was verrry hard for me to write for some reason. I hope it continues the drama a little!_


	4. Pigs

Whoo-boy

_Whoo-boy! I just figured out where this story is going! Hooray for me!_

/

It's Eames who reacts first. While Goren is still staring at the blood-soaked car seat, she pulls out her cell phone.

"It's detective Eames, I need CSU here fast," she says, after dialing, "Fiftieth and Lex. Send a print tech." Goren revives a little at this, and narrows his eyes.

"The guy in the bar," he says, "the one who bumped into you. He could have easily picked your keys out of your bag. It was hanging on the back of the chair."

"The thought had occurred to me," Eames says, testily. "I guess we'll need to sit with a sketch artist. I wasn't really paying attention to his face, I was too busy worrying about the freezing cold drink in my lap."

"I saw his face pretty well," Goren says. "But he looked like he was following someone. Like it really was an accident. He's good."

"It wasn't Dennis Gordon," Eames says. "I'm sure of that."

"He could have hired someone," Goren says. He examines the car door, takes out some gloves, and reaches for the handle.

"Wait—" Eames grabs for his arm. "It might be rigged. Wait for the unit to get here."

"Are your house keys still in your purse?" Goren asks, withdrawing his hand.

"No," Eames says, "they were on the same key ring." Goren shakes his head. In the distance, he can see the CSU vans pulling around the corner.

"You shouldn't stay at home tonight," he says, "let a squad do an examination of your place. And change your locks."

"No kidding," Eames says shortly. "I'll stay with my parents. They've got an extra room. Goren shakes his head again.

"You should stay at my place," he says. He bites his lip. "You'll—" he stops, hesitates. "You'll, uh, be more safe there." Eames shoots him a sideways glance. Her partner. Always the protector. It's irritating, sometimes, but right now it's more than welcome. He doesn't want to admit that he wants to keep an eye on her, but the way she's feeling, she doesn't mind. Right now on this dark street corner, her car drenched in god-knows-who's blood, a cautious eye on her certainly doesn't seem like such a bad idea.

"Ok," she says, "if it isn't an imposition."

"Never," he replies, as the first van pulls up beside them and men start piling out with their cameras and equipment.

/

They both arrive at One PP the next day, exhausted, at 7:00 on the dot. The captain calls them in, looking harried.

"I was supposed to visit my nephew this morning," Eames grumps to Goren on the way in. Neither of them had had more than 4 hours of sleep the last night, and Eames had spent those hours thrashing around in Goren's bed, angry and frightened and restless. He had forced her to take the bed, of course, against her protests.

_I'll be ok on the couch! _

_No, you take the bed._

_But Bobby, your couch is two feet too short for you!_

_It's my apartment, my couch. I can sleep on it if I want._

She couldn't exactly argue with that, but she felt terribly self-conscious in her partner's bed. It felt like a violation of his privacy. She had never even seen his bedroom before, let alone tested out his box spring. She kept jumping at noises from outside. _Who would kill someone in my car? _She finally fell asleep, curled up, her back to the wall, like a little girl.

/

"Pig's blood?" Goren's incredulous voice breaks the long silence after the captain gives them the news.

"That's what the lab reports," Deakins says. "No human DNA. Also, no fingerprints, fibers, or anything else to identify the perp. And nothing at your place," he says, motioning to Eames. There's another long pause.

"I guess that's what I get for being prom queen," Eames says. Neither man smiles. She bites her lip.

"Animal sacrifce?" Deakins asks, breaking the terse silence. Goren's lips are so compressed that they're almost invisible. Eames looks terribly vulnerable standing there, her arms folded protectively against herself. "Santeria?"

"It doesn't look like it," Goren says, "no other ritual elements on the..uh, the scene."

"It's clearly a warning," Deakins says. "Cops. Pigs. Pig's blood. But the question is—why Eames, and why now? Is it the case you're working on?"

"Could be," Eames says, "the suspect might have figured out we're on to him."

"He's cunning," Goren breaks in. "He could have pulled this off to scare us from the trail."

"Some scare tactics." Deakins looks over at Eames. "I'm going to suggest you use a police escort for the next few days." Eames starts at this.

"No, captain," she says. "if it's all the same, I'd rather not."

"It's not all the same, detective Eames," Deakins says, irritably. "You're in danger. You need protection." Eames bristles.

"Captain, I don't need a squad of bodyguards." She walks towards the door. "I can take care of myself." She pulls the door open and stalks off. The captain looks at Goren.

"You think you can convince her?" He asks, one eyebrow raised. Goren shakes his head.

"I doubt it. She's…she's stubborn. And scared." He looks out the door after his partner, who is sitting at her desk, staring angrily at some papers. "I can protect her," he says softly to Deakins, and backs out of the room.

"I don't doubt it," Deakins murmers at his retreating form.

/

Eames slowly becomes aware of Goren hovering around near her desk. His big hand comes to rest on her shoulder and she fights the urge to shake it off. She doesn't know where this sudden surge of anger has come from, but she knows it's probably a fear reaction. She doesn't like it, but her whole body feels like one sensitive nerve ending. Any touch makes her want to shudder. Even his.

"Eames," he says, sounding worried.

"What?" She snaps, and is immediately sorry as he backs up a little, his brown eyes flicking down to the ground. She sighs. "I'm sorry," she says, her voice softening. "I don't know.."

"It's ok," he says, sitting across from her and leaning back. "I understand." She's sure he does, but it doesn't make her feel much better. She closes her eyes for a brief moment, gathering strength. "Maybe you should take a couple of days," he suggests. She shakes her head.

"I need to work, Bobby" she says, "you should understand that."

"I know," he says, feeling a strong impulse to reach over and take her hand. "I do."

/


	5. Nicole

/

_A/N: Sorry this chapter is a little full of chatter. I just needed to set this up. And don't be fooled by anything. Just sayin'_

/

Alex Eames leans back against the counter in the tiny, dark restaurant. _It's funny how fear can sharpen your senses_, she thinks, as she watches the fat man on the stool gesturing at her partnet. Everything seems brighter, somehow, the colors more vivid. She feels a slight breeze from the open door, hears the clink of the cutlery in the kitchen, can smell veal roasting. She wonders, briefly, if this is how her partner feels every day, if this could be the source of his hyperactive powers of observation. The thought makes her slightly sad and she's not sure why. The sitting man is Kevin Anderson. He's the owner of the bistro they're currently sitting in, an astronomically expensive gourmet's paradise in the West Village. Yeah sure, he remembers the guy they mentioned on the phone. Eames catches her partner shooting her a glance and is moderately embarassed to have been caught woolgathering. She tunes in to their conversation, moving to stand behind her partner's seated form. Anderson's eyes skim over her face before dropping to rest on her breasts, and then her hips. Since she's behind her partner she can't see the expression on his face but she can tell that he catches this from his shift in posture. He squares his shoulders, making his already impressive body seem even bigger. She sighs inwardly. _I used to work in vice for christ's sakes, Bobby_, she thinks_, you think this is the first time some asshole's ever felt me up with his eyes? _She moves to his side. Anderson doesn't miss a beat in his speech.

"I'll tell ya something, detectives," he says, spreading his hands. "I normally wouldn't have called this in on my own. I mean…" his voice trails off a little.

"You were embarassed," Goren states, making it sound like both a question and an answer. Anderson's broad face splits into a frown.

"Well, they got me. They got me good. But it was partly my fault." His frown abruptly dissappears, replaced by a rueful grin. "My one weakness. Greed." He gestures to his own ample form. Goren's head cocks to one side.

"They?" He asks, "there was more than one party involved?"

"Well," Anderson moves his weight slightly in the chair. "This is how I figure it." Eames has moved again, to his side. He looks at her. "Have a seat, detective?" He asks, and she shakes her head slightly. He continues, turning back to Goren. "This guy comes in one day—this is like what, a year ago? Yeah, last fall. Anyways, this guy— "

"Can you describe him?" Eames interrupts, and he turns his bright little eyes back to her.

"Pretty tall, like maybe your height," he says thoughtfully, gesturing to Goren. "Thin. Brown hair. I dunno, I don't pay a lot of attention to faces." She nods for him to continue.

"Anyways, so this guy comes in, only he has this dog with him. And normally I'm not going to allow any animals into the restaurant—not good for business, you know? So I'm starting to tell him that, but this guy, he's pretty well dressed, respectable looking, right? So he says that he's found this dog on the street last week and he just 'fell in love with it'. That's what he says. He fell in love with it. And he's willing to pay extra, so I'm figuring what the hell, it's just a little dog. This guy he seems awfully attached to it. So I let him stay." Anderson sighs a little, shaking his head at the memory. "I wish I'd never seen that fuckin' dog."

Goren shifts his attention to his partner. She's watching the man talk, but he can tell that her mind is anywhere but here. She's far away from him. He hates that can't reach her. She's scared, and he wants to comfort her, but he still can't bring himself to get too close. His mind retreats to a cold, dark place every time he tries. He's failing as a partner. If he can't protect her, then what is he? Useless. Anderson is still talking, and Goren makes himself pay attention—but he can't stop his eyes from falling on Eames every so often. She doesn't notice.

"…so she sits down at the bar and orders a gimlet," Anderson is saying. Goren shakes his head.

"Back up," he says, "this woman—what did she look like? How was she dressed?"

"I said already," Anderson complains, looking a little put out. "She was short and blonde. Designer suit. DNKY. I notice women's clothes. Used to own a consignment shop. Before I decided to get into food. Better money in food, if you're good at it." He leans towards Eames and winks. "And I'm _very_ good at it."Goren gets up and starts pacing. A short, blonde woman. Designer suit. He feels a little shiver pass through his body. Intuition, call it whatever you want. He smelled Nicole Wallace all over this. No evidence for it, but he felt his shoulders tense anyhow.

"Go on," he says, a soft, predatory note entering his voice. Eames notices this, and it pulls her back from the far away place that her mind had wandered to. How long had she been woolgathering, she wondered? What did she miss?

"So the man is getting ready to pay," Anderson chatters on, "but he starts slapping at his pockets, like. And then he says 'oh god. I forgot my wallet.' And I'm thinking 'great, I'm getting ripped off by this big dog-loving softy.' Then he says he's going to go get it, he lives a few blocks away, and I'm saying 'no way, partner, I'll never see you again.'" He pauses for a breath, and continues, his conversational powers seemingly inexhaustable. "So I says, 'you love this dog so much, why don't you leave it here while you go get the wallet. Like collateral. So I'm guaranteed that you're not history.' And he says 'Ok' immediately, like an honest guy, he just wants to help, you know, he's all goodness and light." Anderson shakes his head in disgust. "So he leaves, and this little dog is just sitting there leashed to a bar stool, looking like a little fuzzy slipper, just a dopey little thing, but then again, I'm not a dog lover, myself. And that's when the women comes over." Goren leans forward a little at this, his eyes narrowing. Eames unconsciously mirrors his movements, wondering at his sudden vigilance. "The woman asks me about the dog. She asks where I got it from, and I tell her—" Goren interrupts.

"Did the woman have an accent of any kind?" He asks, and suddenly Eames understands. She takes a step forward and puts a hand on his shoulder. He flinches a little, but eases at her touch, an unspoken current of understanding running through them like water.

"Nah," Anderson says, and then stops. "Maybe a little. British or something? But she sounded pretty normal to me, just a little emphasis on her vowels. I can't pinpoint it." Both detectives are now fully at attention. "Anyways," Anderson continues, "I say it's not mine, it's some customers. Found him on the street. And this bitch, I swear, she nearly comes in her pants when she hears this. Tells me she's a dealer in rare dogs, and this dog is the rarest they come. She says he's worth, I'm not shitting you, a hundred thousand dollars. Some chinese chow shit. I dunno. And ok, here comes the part I'm not too proud of. She gets this phone call and says she has to leave. Important meeting. Looks like it's breaking her heart. She gives me her card and tells me that if the guy is interested in selling, to give him the card. And I'm thinking, a hundred thousand bucks? This guy has no fucking clue. He thinks it's just some dog off the street. But he's in love with it, right? So the woman leaves, and the guy comes back in about fifteen minutes with his wallet." Anderson stops, and looks sheepish.

"It's ok, Mister Anderson," Eames says, "we're not here to arrest you for anything. We're just interested in information about the man. Anderson throws her another wink, and Eames and Goren exchange a wry smile.

"Ok, so he comes back and I tell him…well…I say 'Look Mister, I don't usually do this, but your dog, he's just so cute. He's stolen my heart. I want to buy him from you.' And the guy says 'No way. This dog is my life now. He's my best friend.' So I offer him five grand. He says no. The dog. It's just his only companion. So I say seven grand. He says no, but he's faltering a little. I can see that I got him. So I say ten grand. And he starts crying a little. No lie. But he says ok, he's hard up, and I tell him I'll throw in the meal. So I write a check for ten grand, and he makes a big show of crying over this dog. Hugging him. Almost made me sick. Then he leaves, and I call the number on the woman's card…" his voice trails off.

"And it's disconnected." Goren finishes for him. Anderson nods. "I was out ten grand and all I have to show for it is this stupid dog. I checked with an expert. The dog is a fucking mutt, Worthless. Gave him to a shelter."

"And the woman?"

"Never saw her again," says Anderson.

"Do you still have the card?" Goren asks.

"Yeah, I kept it. I was too embarassed to go to the cops. It's my own damn fault I got ripped off. But I figured the card might come in handy some day." He heaves his enormous form off the stool and walks ponderously behind the bar. He hands the card to Goren, who looks it over.

"Stephanie Forman, Dog Breeder, address in Queens, phone number, probably disposable pre-paid." He flips it over. "There are indentations on the back. It looks like someone wrote something over the card. Maybe we can get a rubbing from it." He stands up, and Eames follows him to the door. "Thank you, Mr. Anderson. You've been very helpful."

They leave the dark restaurant and enter into the bright light of early evening. Goren doesn't even notice that Eames is watching him very carefully. His head is full of Nicole Wallace.

/


	6. Monster

A/N: The last chapter was rather boring

_A/N: The last chapter was rather boring. Things get a little, uh, __**heated**__ from here on in._

/

"The lab has the report back from the writing on the back of the card," Bobby says, making his way over to Eames' desk waving a small piece of paper.

"If it's a recipe for veal parmesan," Eames mutters, "I'm going home." This earns her a rare chuckle from Goren, as he tosses her a bag of skittles and her coat.

"It's an address. Park Slope, Brooklyn"

"Lucky us," Eames says, following Goren out the door. When they reach the rental car, she pauses at the handle. Bobby glances at her.

"Want me to drive?" He asks, gently. Eames looks up, startled.

"No, I'd like to get to Park Slope intact," she retorts flippantly, and jerks the door open, sliding inside. Goren shakes his head a little. Alex Eames is a stubborn woman. He knows this about her, and he loves this about her, but at times like this he has to fight a strong urge to pull her physically out of the car and shake her a little. _It's ok to be scared, Alex_, his mind pleads with her. But he can't do it. She would completely freak out, and besides, her strong will gives her strength Even if it's a false sort of strength—at least one of them could use some. He gets in the car next to her, and glances down. There is a long silence between them, and then Alex says,

"Bobby," and reaches over to touch his hand briefly. "It could just be a coincidence." He shakes his head.

"It doesn't feel like a coincidence," he says softly. "Does it?"

"No," Eames says, and there is silence the rest of the way to Brooklyn.

/

They pause at either side of the door. Eames nods at Goren, and he knocks on the door, stepping back.

Neither of them expect what happens next.

As the woman opens the door, Bobby's eyes widen. Nicole! But then in the next second, not Nicole. Clearly not her. There are superficial similarities, of course. She has the same small, trim figure, the same delicate features, but this woman is easily a decade younger, has a fuller face, longer, blonder hair. Bobby notices all of this in the split second or so before she brings the gallon can of tomato soup swinging into his jaw.

He sees stars. Literally. The expression sounds silly to those who've never been brained by a heavy object, but as he staggers back into the wall, his vision swims and bright sparks appear before his eyes. He hears Eames shout "Bobby!"

It sounds very far away.

/

It all happens so fast that Eames hardly has time to react. As soon as the woman hits her partner in the face, she drops the can and stands still, looking shocked. Then her eyes widen and she rushes towards Goren, pleading with him.

"Oh my GOD," she says, "I'm so sorry!"

Eames' mind finally snaps back into action mode. She grabs the woman and wrestles her arms behind her back. The woman looks up at her with huge eyes. She looks frightened—confused.

"Police!" Eames says, and the woman starts crying.

"I'm so sorry," she says again, tears streaking her complexion. "I thought—it's so stupid. I'm so STUPID."

Goren is sagging against the wall, dazed. He has no idea how such a small woman can have hit him with such strength. His mind reels. It's not Nicole. But they are so much alike. Similar accent, similar affect. They could be sisters. But Nicole doesn't have a sister. There's no record, nothing. It was just her and her father. No mother in the picture. Could this woman be a relative? His intellect struggles against the thought. He props himself up a little, reaches a hand up to feel his jaw, the swelling there.

Meanwhile, the woman is still pleading. "Please let me go," she says. "I know, I've made a terrible mistake. But at least—there's ice in the fridge. She gestures with her head towards Goren. Eames gives her a sharp look.

"Assaulting a police officer is a serious offence," she says, and after she expertly cuffs the woman, she reaches a hand towards Goren. "Bobby," she says, "Bobby, talk to me."

Bobby stands up, a little unsteady. "I'm ok, Eames," he says. "Let's go inside."

/

Inside, the woman sits, balancing a glass on her knee. Eames has uncuffed her, keeping a watchful eye on her movements. Goren has an ice pack up against his face, and he, too, fixes the woman with a keen eye.

"I'm so sorry," she says for the third time. "I thought you were…" she glances down. "I thought you were Dennis."

The detectives look at each other. "Dennis?" Goren asks, his jaw sore and painful.

"My ex-boyfriend," the woman says, her face an alternating pattern of disgust and fear. "He's…he's a monster."

"What is _your_ name?" Eames asks her.

"Claire," she says, "Claire LeBlanc," she reaches a hand out towards Goren, and withdraws it. "When I looked through the keyhole and didn't see anyone, I thought you were him. You do look alike."

"Why are you afraid of him?" Goren asks. He's still trying to make sense of her. She doesn't fit. Looking at her is like looking at a hole in his mind. None of the facts stick. He can't decide. "He was abusive?" he asks her.

"Not to me," Claire says, and her eyes well up again. "You have to understand. When I met Dennis, I was going through a hard time. I was failing medical school. I had a habit—an addiction. My life was..complicated. And Dennis, he seemed so put-together. He was smart, he helped me. But…" She takes a sip from her glass. "He used me. To do terrible, stupid things. Steal money." She looks up at Goren with those large, helpless eyes. "I thought we were so invincible. So smart. Taking money from all these stupid, greedy people. But then—" her eyes are so wet, so insecure. He feels like he's drowning in them. Claire puts the glass down and closes her eyes. "I think he killed someone," she says, and it's a whisper, hardly audible, and then she starts to cry in earnest.

/


	7. Hands

A/N: Reviews, people

_A/N: Reviews please, people! I want to write what you want to read! Also, I know this is a short chapter, but I wanted to do a small update—the next chapter will be longer._

/

Goren leans forward. "You know he killed someone," he asks, his intense gaze penetrating her to her core, "why didn't you report anything?" Claire swipes at her eyes ineffectually with the back of her hand.

"I was afraid," she says, "and I don't _know_ anything, really, but I..I _know_, deep down, that he did it."

"Who did he kill, Claire," Eames tries to break the cold-lock stare that her partner and the woman are sharing. It makes her uncomfortable. She knows her partner has blind-spots. This woman..there's something off about her. Something that makes Eames' hackles rise. _Maybe it's…jealousy?_ The way that the woman is looking at Bobby, the way he's looking at her..but no. They've interviewed suspects before. Women. All Bobby has to do is smile at them and they fawn all over him. This is different. There's something drastically wrong, but Eames can't pinpoint it. All she knows is that she wants to grab her partner and run. Danger. Abort mission. But she doesn't.

"His ex-girlfriend, I think," Claire says, biting her lip, not looking at Eames. "I don't know her name, but I met her once. She seemed so frail. I think she was sick. But Dennis. He yelled at her. Called her a stupid cunt. I couldn't believe it. This woman, she looked like she was going to faint, and Dennis shouted at me to get out. To get out, to go away, that I was a stupid whore too, just like all of them. And he had a knife." Her voice breaks. "I changed the locks, but I still feel—my skin feels crawly whenever I go outside. His rage…I've never seen anyone change so fast. And I went back. To her apartment building, but the police where there." She reaches again towards Goren, and manages to cover his hand with hers in a posessive caress. "I'm scared," she says.

He doesn't know what to say. Her hand is warm on his and he allows it to stay there, even though she's a suspect, even though she's a criminal. She's so lost. He knows how she feels. Being lost is like falling through space. He can feel Eames' eyes on him, and he shudders, breaking contact, breaking the hold the woman has on him. He gently removes her hand from his.

"We need to go downtown," he says. "You need to make a statement." She doesn't say anything, just looks down at her hands. Eames stands up and lays a hand on her shoulder.

"Let's go," she says, and Claire stands up, shoulders slumped, and follows her outside to the car.

/

Just outside the building, Eames puts Claire in the car, and then grabs Bobby's arm. "What's going on?" she hisses at him. "Are you really ok?"

"I have no idea," he says.

Eames stands for a moment, her hand still on his arm, feeling an aching need to reach up and touch his face, where it's tender and sore.

"Could that be Nicole?" She asks instead, trying to bring him out of himself. "Could she have gotten reconstructive surgery?"

"It's not Nicole," he says, sounding sure and unsure. He wavers for a moment. "It's not Nicole," he says again, "but I don't know…"

"What?" Eames says urgently, "what don't you know? I have such a bad feeling about this." She looks at his dark eyes, sees how preoccupied and sick he truly looks. And she can't help herself. She lets her hand slide down to grabs his. Clasps it in her own. He feels her small thumb massaging his skin gently. He is shocked. This sort of intimate contact, even this small a display, has been absolutely verboten in their partnership up until now. Skin touching skin—Bobby knows why he doesn't allow himself to do it, it's his penance. The punishment he has given himself for falling in love with her. He wouldn't be able to control himself. Touching would be an admission.

He doesn't really know why Alex doesn't touch him, has never touched him, but he figures it's either out of respect for his clear preference for distance, or else she just doesn't feel the need. He's too entranced by her sudden touch that he doesn't notice the girl in the backseat of the car, who has shifted around to stare at them. He doesn't see the look on her face.

/


	8. Lips

A/N: I swear this didn't start out as this kind of story :P

_A/N: I swear this didn't start out as this kind of story :P_

/

Alex doesn't catch Claire's look either. She's too caught up in her own surprise at her actions. She feels a flush rise on her cheeks as she finds herself looking stupidly down at their entwined hands. Unbeknownst to Bobby, the reason that Alex doesn't touch him is much the same reason that he doesn't touch her, though she wouldn't put it in quite such dramatic terms. _It's just not safe to tempt fate_ is her general take on this particular set of rules. It's been so long since she's even been on a date, much less…anything else. He squeezes her hand gently, and then lets it go.

"I'm fine, Eames," he says, looking down at her. He gives her a half-smile.

"I'm not convinced," she says.

"Me neither," he says, "but there's nothing to do about it. Let's take Claire's statement."

"Bobby," she says, "don't—" but he is gone. She watches him slide into the passenger seat of the car. In the window she sees Claire's white face. She looks scared.

/

Back at One PP. Alex leads Claire to an open conference room. The girl looks around with considerable interest, her eyes missing no detail as she scans the room. She takes in the detectives standing by the vending machine, probably gossiping, and she notes a tall, lanky detective reclining at his desk, feet on the table. _Detective Logan_, she guesses. During her research, she had been charmed by Logan's attitude and behavioural history. As they pass by Goren and Eames' desks she notes every detail that she can see. Empty skittles wrappers, coffee cups, files scattered about. No family pictures, but then again, that is to be expected. She gives a small smile, then quickly surpresses it before either detective can notice.

/

She gives the statement in a flat, affectless tone. Gordon Dennis was a monster, he used her, took advantage of her, but she doesn't deny that she's responsible. She should have had better judgement. She gives details about their various cons, going back a few years. They were a good team, she says, and shivers. She made a good shill. Her eyes are glued to the table in front of her. That's all she was to him. A partner in crime. She looks up only once.

"I never thought of myself as a criminal until now," she says. "I knew what I was doing was criminal, but I could always distance myself from it." Her eyes flicker to Eames, then to Goren. "I'm sorry," she says, "you can take me in, if you want. I deserve to be in jail." Eames looks at Goren, who has his head cocked slightly to one side.

"I'm not so sure," he says.

About the murder, she doesn't know anything, just what she's told them. About his present whereabouts, nothing. Only that she hopes that they catch him before he can kill again.

_Oh_, they reassure her, _we'll catch him._

"I'm sure you will," she says, and gives them a small, sad smile.

/

After she gives her statement, Bobby goes into the break room, and leans against a wall, closing his eyes. There's still something here, something that he's missing. He pinches the bridge of his nose. The break room door opens, and he opens his eyes, expecting to see Eames, or some tired cop looking for coffee. Instead he sees Claire.

"I thought the officer was going to take you home," he says as she approaches him.

"I asked him for a minute," she replies. "I wanted to ask you something." She sits down in front of him, her legs primly crossed in front of her.

"Shoot," he says, tiredly, dropping into the chair next to hers. She leans over to him and places her small hand on his arm. He notes the soft touch, but doesn't look over at her. His mind feels cloudy.

"I'm not sure how to put this…delicately," she says. "But how long have you and detective Eames been seeing each other?"

Startled, Bobby turns to look her in the eye. She gives him a grin. "I know, it's none of my business, and you can tell me to go to hell if you want. Its just that…you seem like such a nice man, and I'm usually good with reading people."

"We're…we're not…" Bobby stammers at her, completely disconcerted. He tries to pull himself together. "Detective Eames and I are parters," he says, "nothing else."

Claire shakes her head. "I don't believe that," she says. "I've seen the way you two look at each other. But," she stands up, smoothing down her skirt, "I understand the need for discretion, I guess, in this kind of atmosphere." Pausing at the door, she turns and looks at him. "Good for you guys," she says, "it's nice to see some proof that love isn't just a complete sham."

Then she walks out, leaving Bobby completely stymied, flushed red, staring after her. _What the hell?_

/

As she walks out, Claire allows herself a private, satisfied smile. _I see how it is_, she thinks, and allows the officer to take her arm.

/

Eames finds Bobby sitting at his desk, a few minutes later, his head in his hands.

"Hey, you ok?" She asks, putting a hand on his shoulder. Startled, he looks up at her. She worries about the tiredness in his eyes.

"I'm…a little tired," he admits, "and confused."

"Well," she says, "lets talk about it over dinner. Chinese takeout ok with you?" A small smile crinkles the corners of his eyes.

"I guess I could use an eggroll or two," he says. The two of them grab their coats and head to the door.

/

Downstairs in the garage, Eames reluctantly hands over the car keys. "Don't get us killed before we get to your place," she warns, "I'm looking forward to that kung-pao chicken." Bobby chuckles as he takes them. Their fingers brush. His breath catches. He thinks back to what Claire said earlier. _Is it that obvious_, he thinks, _to everyone but us_? He remembers his brothers sarcastic words. _"Why don't you just take Eames to a motel room and get it out of your systems?" _It's something that he tries to forbid himself to think about. He is no prize, he knows that. Just a bundle of neuroses and hurt feelings, a wreck of a person with nothing to hold him to his life except for the work. The work and Eames. He is just trying to protect her. She's all he has. He can't lose her, can't bear to lose her, but…he thinks again about Claire's words_. I've seen the way you two look at each other._

The thought that Eames might love him back has literally never ocurred to him. For a smart man, for all of his higher functioning brain cells, he's been virtually blind when it comes to reading all of the signs. The thought that she might love him makes him feel lightheaded.

"Bobby?" Alex is standing right in front of him when his mind swims back to reality. "Bobby, snap out of it, you're scaring me." She grasps his shoulder.

"Alex," he says, his voice coming out in a soft breath.

"Well thank god, Bobby, don't you dare scare me again like tha— " Alex's words are cut off in a surprised inhale. Bobby puts his hand softly over hers, on his shoulder. His fingers trace lightly over her skin, making her shiver. Their eyes connect, and they hold their gaze. Her eyes widen a little, and then she gives him a smile. It's a beautiful, happy smile. She gasps a little as he runs his hand down her spine and splays his fingers out on the small of her back, radiating heat up and down her body. She feels a flush of heat on her cheeks and her lower body grows warm as he pulls her to him, tight against his body. His other hand brushes over her neck and into her hair as he leans down and gently places his lips to hers.

Every nerve in her body comes alive as their lips touch, feeling his hands in her hair, caressing her back, so warm over the thin fabric of her shirt. Her hands slide up the sides of his body, over his shoulders, and their embrace grows even closer. His tongue parts her lips and then both their tongues are exploring each other's mouths. Finally, after what seems like forever, she pulls away, gently biting his lower lip. They're both breathing hard and his eyes are dark with desire.

"Was—is that ok?" he asks, and she sees his worry, like a dog ready to be hit. He needs to be reassured.

"More than ok," she says, grasping his hand. "It's just that…we're in the parking garage of One PP. We might want to be discrete."

He takes her hand and brings it to his lips. "I don't feel like being very…discrete right now. But you're right."

"Plus," she says, grinning at him, "I'm still waiting for that eggroll."

/

The ride back to Bobby's apartment is mostly silent. As he sits down at the wheel, Alex places her hand on his thigh, high up. Bobby gasps.

"You said you didn't want to die before you get your dinner," he chides her. "This isn't the way to get me to drive safely."

"I'm not too worried about my chicken right now," she says, sliding her hand up a few more inches, feeling his muscles twitch. He turns and gives her a look, and she bursts out laughing and removes her hand. At the first red light, she leans over and gives him a gentle kiss.

"What was that for?" he asks.

"Do I have to have a reason?"

"No, I guess not."

They reach his apartment more or less in one piece, but both of their cheeks are flushed, and their breathing is a little hectic. He gets out first, and walks over to her door.

"You really ok?" he asks her, as she gets out.

"Bobby," she says, "I've never been more ok in my life." He smiles as she says this, and slams the car door behind him.

After that, all there is is a deafening roar of sound and heat.

Then, nothing.

/

_A/N: Sorry for the long time between updates, but I promise you I'm working fast again, and there will be more updates shortly._


	9. Chinatown

A/N: Life keeps getting in the way of my ficcing

_A/N: Life keeps getting in the way of my ficcing. But thanks for all your kind reviews. Btw there is a spoiler for the movie Chinatown in this chapter, so if you haven't seen it, beware. And for goodness sakes, go netflix it or something._

/

Bobby struggles to surface from a smothering dark pool of unconsciousness. Somewhere behind his sore, swollen eyes, spidery white lights flash. His brain feels sticky, fighting to keep a hold on thoughts that keep threatening to slip away. In the darkness, he hears a low, unpleasant laugh. There's something so familiar about that laugh. His breath hitches in his chest.

"Nicole," he moans, his voice sounding hollow, reverberating as if in an empty chamber. He tries to pry his eyes open, but they won't make it. Blood floods to his head, making his ears pound. Then, there's nothing but a confusing jumble of emotions. He can't move his arms or his legs. He feels the binding—not rope, but some kind of smooth electrical tape. No chance of his prying loose. No escape. Nicole. How could he have possibly been so blind.

"Not quite, detective Goren," says a voice, horribly close, and his head jerks backwards, reacting to the shock, slamming into the wall behind him. Now his eyes are open. They roll wildly before focusing at the face that looms inches from his.

"Claire," he whispers, confusion making his mind race. "Claire?"

"Oh, detective," she says, letting out a delighted giggle. She runs the tip of one finger over his lips, gently, affectionately, before withdrawing her hand and expertly backhanding him, fingers outstretched. He feels her knuckles sting his cheekbone, and his head rocks back, hitting the wall again. A gasp escapes him. "You and I are going to have so much fun together!" She says, grinning.

"Who…who are you?" He asks, desperate for some kind of meaning, something to grasp on to. What did this girl have to do with him? Her eyes sparkle with manic excitement.

"Nicole was right," she says, straddling his thighs, her hands running delicately down his sides. "You do remind me so much of our father."

/

Bobby reels. Her sister? In all of his dealings with Nicole, there was never a mention of a sister. In all his research, he has never uncovered one. How could he not know that Nicole had another psychotic sibling on the loose somewhere? He runs his tongue over cracked lips, trying to regain some sense of control over the situation.

"Sis..sister? Nicole is your sister?" He forces himself to look her in the eyes, and is disturbed by the geniune glee he finds there. She's like a child…exactly like a child on Christmas morning.

"You can say that, I guess," she shrugs dismissively, "it's true enough." The smile slips a little from her face. "Stupid whore," she hisses, digging her nails into Bobby's sides. He flinches a little, he can't help it, and her smile returns, brigher than ever. "Still, she was right about you, and that's saying something. Ususally her taste in men is…suspect."

"You said," Bobby pauses, his mind finally starting to catch the trailing thread of the dark situation behind the woman currently shifting on his lap, "that you have the same father. What about…your mother?" This causes another delighted laugh. Claire wiggles a little, and starts to move her hands further downwards, resting uncomfortably near his waist.

"That's rich, detective, especially coming from you. You know how unreliable 'Mummies' can be."

The full horror of the situation hits Bobby like a lightning strike. He closes his eyes to it, as much in sympathy as in the need not to look into Claire's crazy, damaged gaze.

"Nicole," he says, eyes still closed. "She's your mother." Claire gets up abruptly, and Bobby looks up at her, feeling pity, and shock. He thinks back to every interaction he's had with Nicole. Every flirtatious look she's given him, every vicious crime.

"Yes, yes," Claire paces around in front of Bobby, purses her lips. "My mother. My sister. My mother and my sister." She laughs. "I always loved that movie, didn't you? So full of drama. _Chinatown_," she lowers her voice dramatically. "used to make me bawl like a baby, detective. What a silly girl I was." The british accent has crept into her voice more now, making her sound eerily like Nicole. She talks fast, moving restlessly. "You really do look like him, detective. Our father. I would never have believed it. But Nicole, she wouldn't shut up about you, so I had to see for myself. Do you know," she says, placing her hands on either side of Bobby's and leaning in, "I believe that she is actually in _love _with you. Can you believe it?" She laughs a shrill laugh.

Bobby mentally shudders, thinking wildly. _How am I going to get out of this? _And then, naturally, _Eames. Where is Eames? _He doesn't realize he's spoken it out loud until Claire stops her pacing.

"Oh, I wouldn't be entertaining any thoughts about your precious Eames coming to rescue you," she says, her voice a lazy singsong. "You see, I just had to get you away from her. When you shut the car door you triggered the mechanism on the bomb that I planted. In her coat pocket."

/

_A/N: Yes, I know I'm mean. But all will be explained! I promise!_


	10. Smoke

A/N: ok, I didn't want to be too mean

_A/N: ok, I didn't want to be too mean. You didn't really think I'd kill poor Eames off before I got a chance to write some really dirty BA smut, did you? Btw, sorry for any medical innacuracies in this chapter, but watching House compulsively doesn't qualify me as a doctor, unfortunately._

/

Eames sucks in a lungful of air through burning lungs. Her eyes open warily, eyelashes crusted, sticking together. _What a mess_, she thinks to herself, before she's racked with a spasm of coughing. She knows immediately that she's in a hospital room. The steady beep of a heart moniter beside her bed, and the bland, lemony smell of disenfectant told her so before she even opened her eyes. After the coughing passes, sinuses stinging, she reaches towards the man-shaped blur beside her bed.

"Bobby," she croaks out. Her eyes clear a little. Not Bobby. Her father.

"Hi honey," he says tenderly, and leans over her. "Nurse," he calls out, "she's awake."

"Where's Bobby?" She asks, irrational fear washing over her. He gives her a troubled look, and she sees his eyes, red-rimmed. He won't meet her gaze.

"Shhh, sweetheart," he says, pressing against her chest so that she's forced to lie back. "Just rest, ok?"

A nurse comes in, all white efficiency and teddy-bear scrubs. She checks Eames' vitals and takes her temperature. "I'll tell the doctor that she's awake," she tells Eames' father, giving Eames a smile that, for some reason, irritates her. _I'm right here_, she thinks. _Stop ignoring me._

"Dad," she begins, but he cuts her off.

"It's not a good idea for you to talk yet, ok honey? The doctor says your lungs were damaged due to smoke and heat inhalation. Let's just wait until he checks you out." He sits down again by her bedside, and grasps her hand in his. "Let's just wait," he says again.

/

The doctor comes in a few minutes, interrupting Eames' steadily increasing anxiety. She's been lying back, taking stock of her physical condition. She can move all her limbs, so that's good, but she's bandaged on one leg it feels like up to the knee, and again up to the elbow on her left arm. The skin beneath the bandages feels taught and stinging. She's burned. She can tell the feelings. Other than that, her lungs feel like they've been scraped from the inside, and her throat is swollen and sore, reminding her of cases of strep that kept her home from school as a child_. I was caught in a fire_, she thinks, then, noticing how her hearing seems muted, she thinks_, a bomb_? Since having that thought her panic level has been rising exponentially. Why doesn't she remember anything? What had happened? Why was her father avoiding her questions? And for fuck's sake where was Bobby? Her heart ached at the thought of Bobby lying in the hospital somewhere beyond her reach, alone. Or worse…no she wouldn't let her mind entertain those thoughts. This was Bobby. The most resilient man she knew.

"Well," the doctor says in a hail-fellow-well-met sort of cheery way, "finally with us, eh, sleeping beauty?" Eames bristles a little. She doesn't want this cheesy banter. She wants answers.

"Doctor--" she begins, and he cuts her off.

"Patterson," he says. Then he starts flipping through her chart. "Yes, you're doing much better," he says. "Your O-two sats are back to more-or-less normal, and it looks like the scarring on your lungs is much less extensive than we had originally feared."

"DOCTOR!" Eames is at the end of her rope. She doesn't mean to have shouted quite so loudly, but at least it got his attention. He looks at her, startled. "I'm sorry," she says in a more normal tone, "but I need to know what happened to me. I don't remember.." Tears sting at the back of her eyes. She feels her father's reassuring hand cover hers.

"Well," the doctor looks distinctly uncomfortable. "It looks as if someone planted a bomb in the car that you were driving. You were lucky, though. If that man hadn't shielded you, you might not have made it."

_That man….shielded_…Eames' blood suddenly seems shot through with ice.

"What…what happened to him?" She askes, her voice husky, face ashen. The doctor's discomfort is now palpable.

"Well, he caught the full force of the blast. I'm afraid….I'm afraid he didn't make it. I'm sorry," he says quickly, as her face twists in misery, "was he a friend of yours?"

"He was my partner," she says quietly, trying to at least hold it together until she's alone.

"Actually.." her Dad speaks up for the first time in all this mess. "It wasn't her partner." He turns to his daughter. "It wasn't Bobby, Alex."

Eames looks up at him, her tears arrested by a sudden rush of hope that made her feel lightheaded. "Who was it, then?" she asks, "Who was it, Daddy?" her voice rising.

Her Dad takes out a small notebook from his pocket and flips through it. "It says here," he muses, "that the ME has identified the body as one Dennis Gordon."

/

_A/N: Don't worry, everything will be explained…eventually. Also, in case you forgot since it's been so long since this story was actually a casefile, Dennis Gordon was their prime suspect, and former boyfriend to the one and only Claire LeBlanc._


	11. Why?

/

A/N: _I know, short chapter, but I wanted to get something up and let you all know that I haven't stopped writing. The next chapter is proving to be difficult to write, because I have to make everything start to make sense :P_

/

Goren has always considered himself something of a _lusus naturae_ when it comes to reading people. Growing up, he learned early to anticipate his mother's bad days, to avoid his father's rough, whiskey-laced breath, the smack of his belt, leather on skin. He's never minded this, has always felt both proud and slightly rueful of his innate abilities. They've certainly gotten him in trouble in the past, but have saved his life more times than he can count. Right now, however, he feels as if someone has reached out and ripped open his chest. He closes his eyes, and feels the prickling of unshed tears. He fiercely fights them away.

"Why?" He whispers, unable to bring himself to look her in the eye. He hears an impatient noise.

"Come on, detective," Claire's voice is full of contempt and something else. Some unnameable emotion "That should be obvious by now." He feels her touch on his arm, and struggles not to wrench his arm away. "I want you all to myself," she brings herself close to his face, and he feels her warm breath on his ear. "She would have kept looking for you," she says. "I know the type. I wanted to have you in peace." She slides back and gets up, looking at her watch. She seems completely unaware of his complete an consuming pain. He opens his eyes, and his tears fall, streaking down his face. She looks at him with narrowed eyes.

"Why?" He asks again, his chest tight with grief. "Why me?" Claire shakes her head and checks her watch again.

"I'll let the legendary Goren intellect work on that one for awhile," she says. "You ought to be able to figure it out for yourself." She checks her watch again, and starts to fade back into the blackness of the room behind her. "I'll be back when you're more…when you've calmed down," she says, and then she's gone. Bobby lets his head fall back, resting against the wall. The pool of light that he's seated in grows unbearably bright, and he feels clouds scudding in against the turmoil of his mind. When he finally starts to fade into unconsciousness, he feels something a lot like gratitude.

/


	12. How?

A/N: Gah, I can't wait for the season finale

A/N: _Gah, I can't wait for the season finale. I'm DYING here._

/

Alex stares blankly up at the ceiling of her hospital room, drowning in frustration. After dropping the bomb about Dennis Gordon, her Dad had stayed a little while longer, listening to her go at it with the MD.

"Three of four DAYS??" She had said, her blood pressure shooting through the roof. "I can't be stuck here for that long. I have to find Bobby. I have to—"

"We have to monitor you," the doctor had said, sounding frustrated but patient, "the risk of infection after a burn injury is—"

"I'll risk it," she had said, struggling to push herself up onto her elbows.

"But I wont," said the doctor, his irritation showing through. "And I have the final say in this, not you. Just rest. Get better. If you're still improving at the rate you're going now, you'll be good to go. But not if you tax yourself." He had turned to the nurse, then, and said in a voice loud enough so that Alex could hear, "if she tries to leave the room, sedate her." And stalked off before she could retort. After this exchange, her father had patiently tried to reason with her, before looking down at his watch and swearing.

"I've got to go pick your Mom up at the train station," he had said. "Jimmy said he'd be visiting, he should get here any minute." He had lain a gentle hand on her arm. "Will you be ok?" he had asked, and his soft tone, the concern evident in his eyes, had made her own eyes well with tears again, briefly. "Hey," he had said. "It'll be ok. They'll find Bobby. You've got to trust that." She had looked at him, then, and his heart had nearly broken at the look of helplessness and anguish in her eyes.

"I don't know what to do, Dad," she had said. And then, after he had hugged her goodbye, she had cried, hard.

Now she is waiting for Deakins, or anyone, to come relieve her mind of it's current turmoil. She doesn't have to wait long. After about five minutes, a soft knock comes on her open door, and she turns her head to see Deakins standing in the doorway looking grim and concerned.

"Detective Eames," he says, and then, more gently, "Alex. How are you feeling?"

"I'm fine," she says, trying not to wince as she shifts to a sitting position. "Where's Bobby—detective Goren? Where is he?"

Deakins sighs. "Detective Goren is missing," he says, and sits heavily down beside her. "I've got Logan and Wheeler working on it, but whoever it is, they covered their tracks pretty thoroughly." Alex expels a frustrated breath.

"What _do_ we know, Captain?" she asks.

"Rodgers has pieced together a pretty good scenario of what happened during the altercation," Deakins says.

"Well?" Alex looks at him impatiently.

"Maybe I'll let her tell you in person," Deakins says with a lopsided smile. Another knock sounds at the door, as if on cue. Alex turns and sees the familiar form of M.E. Rodgers.

"Detective Eames," The woman's normally dry, slightly sardonic tone is undercut by a current of worry. "You ok?"

"I'm fine," Eames says for what feels like the millionth time. She takes a breath. "Now tell me everything."

/

"It's a pretty convoluted story," says Rodgers, pulling a chair up. "Your tox screen showed traces of chloroform in your system. There wasn't much left of your perp, Gordon, but we got enough to show that he was dosed, too. The extent of his burns made any facial ID impossible, but his dental records made it a clear match. Good thing he was in our system, and good thing we thought to check. There were…well, we were pretty sure at first that it was Goren." She pauses, and looks down at her hands. "That set us back at least 24 hours. I'm sorry, Eames." She looks up at Alex, who nods her head.

"That was probably the perp's plan. Buy himself some time." Rodgers grimaces.

"Well we fell for it. When we finally got the DNA back, we were a little surprised, to say the least. And then there's the bomb tech's report. Here's where it gets a little funky. What is the last thing you remember from that day?" Alex shakes her head a little.

"I…I don't remember much. I got out of the car, and then I heard a loud noise, an explosion, and everything got all hot, and….then nothing." Rodgers nods her head as if this makes sense to her.

"There's a type of incendiary device, rare, called a delayed-time shock reactor. A DTSR. Basically what it is, is a high-tech fakeout. Set it off, and it produces a huge noise, a burst of heat, and nothing else."

A confused frown creases Alex's face. "Why would anyone want a bomb that does nothing?

"You got me," says Rodgers, sounding grumpy. "My theory is that some smart-assed kids from MIT decided that if it's big and loud, it's worth building." She rolls her eyes. "We figure that when Goren shut the car door, it triggered the device. From the crime scene forensics, it looks like there were two perps. When the device went off, you and Goren were knocked on your asses, and they moved in and dosed you both with chloroform. At least," she pauses, "we assume that's what happened to Goren. What we can't figure out is how Dennis Gordon got on top of you. What the DTSR did was buy them time. They snatched Goren and then set the real bomb off. We don't know if they were aiming to kill you, but it seems doubtful. Why go through all the hooplah if they were just going to bump you off?"

Alex sits for awhile in silence. "If Dennis Gordon hadn't shielded me, I would be dead," she says flatly. Rodgers nods.

"That's what it looks like," she says.

"Then maybe…" Alex bites her lip in thought. "Maybe Gordon was one of the perps. Maybe he thought the plan was to kidnap us both, and…"

"…and his partner had other ideas," says Rodgers. "We thought of that. Whoever his partner was, he or she let him help carry Goren to a nearby car—most probably—and then doped him herself, or knocked him out, placed him on top of you, and drove off. Probably set the real bomb on a timer."

"Gordon was a pawn," Alex muses. "All along. He was meant to distract our attention from someone else."

"Someone pretty cold-blooded," Rodgers adds.

"But why keep me alive?" Alex looks at both Deakins and Rodgers. "He or she could have killed me easily."

"We don't know," says Deakins uncomfortably. "But whoever it is, they have Goren. And the advantage of time. It's been two days. Mostly spent chasing down complete dead ends." He sighs again, looking tired beyond his years.

"Captain," Alex says, and he can see her impatience vibrating from every part of her being. "There was a woman, Claire LeBlanc. Goren and I interviewed her on the day of the attack. She was…something seemed off. We both noticed it." Deakins looks at her, and she can tell she's struck a nerve.

"I know," he says heavily. "Logan and Wheeler tried to track her down."

"Tried?" Alex asks, already feeling a prickle of anxiety.

"She's gone," he says. "She seems to have vanished into thin air."

/

A/N: _I hope that made sense to everyone. If not, let me know. I'm trying to make things add up. Maybe I should have thought about that before ____. And please, keep your wonderful reviews coming. They make me feel all warm and cozy inside._


	13. Loss and Revenge

A/N: Oh man, the season finale knocked my socks off

A/N: Oh man, the season finale knocked my socks off. PS, this chapter is rated M for various adult stuff.

/

Bobby is dreaming. He is in the backseat of his first car, an Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme. The car is a piece of shit, but it has a big backseat, so he's ok with it. He's with his first girlfriend, a small brunette chess champion whom he finds inexplicably hot. They are fumbling in the backseat, trying to press skin to skin. Her shirt is off, and the feeling of her full breast against his palm is almost more than he can bear. She moans as he rubs his thumb over her nipple, and she grapples with the zipper on his jeans. His erection is pressing painfully against the fabric, and he leans in to kiss her. Then she is gone. Eames sits in her place, her chest bare, nipples puckering in the cold air. His Alex. He reaches out to her, wanting to hold her, to sink into her, to have her forever. She catches his hand, and pulls it to her, planting a soft kiss on his palm. She reaches out to stroke his cheek, and then she is gone too, replaced by Claire. She caresses his face, and then her sharp nails rake across his cheek, drawing blood, and his arousal is replaces by a wave of pain and despair.

He opens his eyes.

Claire is sitting on his lap, the soft warmth of her center pressing against him, and he can't fight against the crashing flood of anger that hits him. He bucks violently, trying to get her off of him. Claire stands, and gives him a small smile.

"So now you know," she says, almost lovingly, "now you know how it feels to lose the one person you love."

Bobby tries to fight against the emotions that are clouding his mind. He remembers Declan's words. 'I never ask them about the crime, I ask them about their lives.' _Claire has a story,_ he thinks. _Maybe learning about it will save my life._

"Your father," he whispers.

"My father was a brilliant man," Claire says. "I don't know what Nicole has told you about him, but my guess is that you pictured him as some backwater aussie hick who spent his time getting drunk and creeping into his children's beds. 'It won't hurt. It'll feel good.'" Her voice gets angirer and angrier as she speaks. "But he wasn't like that. He was a thoughtful, sensitive man. A chemist. He liked to talk about books. He taught me to read."

Bobby gazes at her. "You loved him," he says.

"He and I understood each other," Claire says. "Nicole left me when I was 4 years old. She just took off and left me with him. So I grew up with him. Every day, after a few drinks, he would come into my room, read me a story, and then…"

"He molested you," Bobby says.

"No!" Claire stalks furiously towards the table at the back of the room. "He_ loved_ me. He was the only one who loved me. He taught me things. No one can understand that kind of love."

"Claire," Bobby murmers gently, "he abused you. You were a child."

"We were in love," she says sadly, and turns around, walking back towards Bobby. The light glinted off of something in her hand. Bobby's breath hitched when he realized what it was. A scalpel.

/

"Do you know why I killed your partner?" Claire asks softly. "Do you want to know why I killed the one woman you loved? Your only lifeline, your tether?" She moves closer. Bobby says nothing. "Because I want you to feel pain," she says, leaning closer. "I want you to feel unimaginable pain. I want Nicole to know that before you died, you suffered. You suffered, and you suffered, and you begged to live. Nicole stole something from me, and I'm going to take something from her."

Somewhere in Bobby's head, in the dread and the pain and the sadness, a light clicks on.

"Nicole killed your father," he states flatly. Claire's fists clench.

"She came back," she says, "and she stuck a knife in his chest. I found his body when I came home from school."

"Revenge," Bobby says, his voice so soft it was barely audible. Claire laughs.

"Most people go to medical school to learn to heal people," she says. "I went so that I could learn exactly how to hurt. How to inflict as much pain as possible." She opens her palm and examines the scalpel, and then looks him in the eye. "I want you to make love to me," she says, and moves closer.

/

Bobby stares at her. "Why?" he asks, his mind reeling.

"Because," Claire says, "I want Nicole to know that before you died, I had you. I had something she never had. I had the man that she loves." Then she laughs. The laugh makes all the hairs on the back of Bobby's neck stand up. Her eyes are overbright and utterly crazy. "You have a choice, Bobby Goren," Claire says. "Either you fuck me, or I hurt you in ways you've never imagined." She moves even closer, so that she's pressing against him.

Bobby closes his eyes as Claire's hands roam across his chest. She slits his shirt open with the scalpel. Her fingers trace around his nipples, and he feels her warm mouth against one, her tongue teasing him. He feels the humiliation and pain start when he he starts to harden against his will. His disgust grows as her mouth trails downwards, and as she starts to trace across the waistband of his pants, he feels hot tears roll down his face. His disgust with himself is complete, and consuming.

/


	14. Revelation and Escape

A/N: Sorry for the delay in posting

_A/N: Sorry for the delay in posting. I had a treadmill accident and it doesn't pay to write on painkillers ___

/

"You keep going on like this you're going to rehab yourself right back into the ICU," gripes the nurse as Alex trots her way up and down the room. The nurse is rewarded with a barely contained glare. "I know, honey," the nurse says, "but you're getting released the day after tomorrow. There's no need to push youself too hard."

Alex sighs and slows her pace a little, testing one leg and then the other. "I can walk perfectly well," she says, frustrated. "I don't need rehab."

"It's for your own good," the nurse says, "you wouldn't want to get out of the hospital and then collapse before you can find your partner." Alex had confinded in one or two of the nurses in the ward why she was so anxious to get up and out of the hospital, and they were all sympathetic to her situation, but ruled with an iron hand. Many of them suspected that the reason for her wanting to find her partner was more than professional concern, or even the concern of a close friendship, but it was none of their business, so they didn't bring it up. Alex gingerly paces her way back to the nurse, and the nurse allows that maybe she's had enough rehab for one day.

/

Back in her room is no better. She gnaws her lip as she tries to make some sense out of the various progress reports that Deakins is having sent up to her. There's nothing there. No one clue that leaps out at her. No progress is being made. _If only Bobby were here_, she thinks. Bitter irony_. He'd find something in a split second_. _Damnit, Bobby, where are you?_

A shuffling noise at her door makes her look up. Logan is leaning against the doorjam looking pleased and antsy.

"Hey, you're looking almost human today," he cracks.

"Too bad I can't say the same about you," she retorts, feeling a little prickle of excitement run down her spine. "You've got something," she states. Not a question. Logan grins, hands in his pockets.

"Better than something," he says, pacing into her room. "We checked Claire LeBlanc's living space. At first we did't find anything. Not a single fingerprint or trace of life. But," he adds, the grin growing wider, "after some truly spectacular dumpster diving by Barrett, we came up with something. Not much, but enough for our first actual solid lead of the case."

Alex is almost jumping out of her skin at this point. "Cut with the backstory," she says. "What did you find?"

"A hair," he says. "Attatched to a hairbrush. Its Claire's. A whole hair. With root and everything. The ME ran it. And boy, let me tell you, I've never seen Rodgers so excited in my whole life. In fact," he adds, "I don't think I've ever Rodgers betray any sign of human emotion. Except for mild annoyance and sarcasm."

"What did she find?" Alex reaches out and clutches at Logan's arm. "Tell me you big idiot."

"Hey," Logan protests mildly. "Watch who you're calling a big idiot. I mean, your partner's as big as a house." He dodges another swing. "Ok ok, get this. Claire's DNA came up with a match in the system." He pauses for effect. "Nicole Wallace," he says. "Claire and Nicole Wallace are related."

Alex looks at him in shock. "Wha—" she stumbles around her thoughts. "How? Sisters? They're sisters?"

"It gets better than that," Logan says, and suddenly his face turns serious. "Rodgers found something strange in the DNA. The LOCI match suggested siblings, but there was a weakening of the DNA that suggested something else."

"What?" Alex struggles to make sense of it. "What else could it be?"

"A Mother-Daughter match," Logan says. "Claire Leblanc was both Nicole's sister, and her daughter."

Alex lies back in her bed. The enormity of this revelation flattens her. A product of Nicole's abuse. A girl with all of the genetic predispositions and personal history that could turn her into as much of a killer as her sister. More, even, due to the trajedy that led to her conception. What could such a girl want with her partner? And what could she do to him? She tries to breathe slowly.

"Any other leads?" She says, "anything leading to Bobby's whereabouts, for instance?"

"No," Logan says, and he looks down at his feet, in an unconcscious immitation of Bobby's bashful stance. "Nothing."

"I can't stay here for another two days," Alex says. Logan just looks at her, confused. "Care to help a girl break out of the hospital?" She asks. Logan's grin returns.

/

A few hours later, Alex and Logan are making their way to his car through the hospital parking lot. She's wearing a long, dark wig and an outfit that reminds her of her days in vice.

"Where did you get this shit, Logan?" She had asked him when he had initually presented her with the outfit.

"Old girlfriend," he had said shortly, "and the wig is from an old undercover case." He slanted a glance at her. "Don't ask." He says shortly.

So now they get into his car, and out of gratitude, and mild pain in her legs, she even lets him drive.

"First stop is to get you some food," Logan says.

"I'm fine, Logan," she says. "First stop is Bobby's apartment.

"You need to eat," Logan shoots back. "I know what hospital food is like. Plus, we've been over it with a fine-toothed comb. There's nothing."

"Just because you can't go four minutes without eating, Logan," Alex spits, "doesn't mean I can't either. Plus, you don't know Bobby's place like I do." This earns her another sideways glance.

"We've been partners for…I dunno…forever, Logan," she says. "And don't you give me that look. You know better."

"Yes, I do," Logan says. They head off towards Bobby's apartment at top speed.

/

_A/N: Thanks for reading! Reviews plz!!_


	15. PostCoital

A/N: Short wait this time

_A/N: Short wait this time. I just had to get back to poor Bobby._

/

Bobby rises slowly out of unconsciousness again. His groin feels sticky and uncomfortable, and he feels sick to his stomach. He know. He _knows_. He has told rape victims time after time that the body can't help its physical responses to stimuli. That getting aroused during rape is nothing to be ashamed of. But still, he can't rid himself of his rising disgust and self-hatred. This woman. This psychopath who had killed his Eames. His love. He has allowed her to make love to him, and he had even managed to finish the deed. He had satisfied her. Allowed her to gain even more control over him. He closes his eyes against a wave of nausea. How could he disrespect Eames' memory like that? Then he hears a low laugh, and all his muscles tighten. He opens his eyes and seems dimly through the bright glare over his head, Claire's langorous form draped over a chair just out of the circle that the lamp casts. She has covered herself with a silk robe, which doesn't do much to cover anything whatsoever, just outlines her curves.

"Was it good for you, too?" She asks with a laugh. She gets up and lights two cigarettes. Picking up a Glock from the table, she holds it to his head, and then cuts one of his hands free and sticks the cigarette between his lips. "I always like to have a smoke after a good fuck," she says. "Daddy taught me that. I thought you seemed like the type too. I'm good at reading people." She pauses. "Another thing Daddy taught me." She inhales the smoke and lets it out through her nostrils, dragon-style. "I'm going to re-tie you up after your smoke." She goes back to her seat, draping one let over the chair. "And if you try anything before then, I'll shoot you in the knee. Or, I'll slice your achilles tendon. Either way, you'll be in a world of hurt. So if I were you, I'd just enjoy your smoke." She leans back, letting out another contented sigh of smoke. The dim light filters the smoke towards the ceiling. Bobby examines the cigarette, and takes in her form, shadowed in the darkness like a Delacroix nude. Bobby lets out a long breath, the smoke in his lungs feeling almost welcome. He remembers Declan's words. 'I never ask them about their crime, I ask them about their lives.' But hell, in this case he didn't want to hear any more about her twisted past. At least not right now. Right now, he wanted, no, he _needed _to hear about the crime. About how she had killed Eames.

"How did you do it?" He asks, trying to keep his voice steady. "How did you pull all this off?"

"Oh god," she says, "it was easy. It was more than easy. You of all people should know the kind of morons and ignoramoses one has to deal with from day to day. I decided after the millionth time I heard Nicole go on about you that I had found the perfect way to get my revenge on her." She stretches her legs, the robe parting to reveal a long, shapely leg. "It was easy to find a man who looked like you—a little harder to find one that had even a smidgen of intelligence, but I found one. Poor Denny. He was such a hard case. And an idiot. But he had an almost savant-like quality with people. He hated himself and he hated women. Constantly thought they were undermining him, making fun of his 'manhood.' What a ridiculous idea. His manhood. He beat his women, he verbally abused them…until he met me. I let him think that he had total control over me." She lets out a snort. "It's so easy with men. I had him under my thumb. Under my little pinky. He jumped at my every whim, but he still thought he had control over me." She gives another laugh. "Once I had him, he did all my dirty work for me. Well—most of it. Sometimes I hired random sleazebags off the street who would do anything for a buck. Like spill a drink on a pretty woman's lap. "

Bobby inhales on his cigarette. "I take it you killed him," he says quietly. "But why kill Zoey Mitchell?"

"Who?" Claire asks, then nods. "Oh yeah, the ex-bitch with cancer. That one was interesting. I was hesitant at first to kill her, but I knew it would lead you to Dennis, and Dennis would lead you to me. You know," she says, stubbing out her cigarette, "I thought it might be hard, you know, emotionally, to kill a woman with cancer, but it was surprisingly easy. The look in her eyes while the life bled from her…" her voice trails off. "It was relief. I almost felt like a saviour. It was a feeling I'm not used to."

"Did you like it?" Bobby asks, his voice growing even softer, testing the waters gently.

"No," she says, her voice growing a little harsher. "It made it harder for me. But it was necessary. Because as you see," she gestures around her, "here you are."

"And you only had to kill three people to get me here," Bobby says.

"That's the price," Claire says, "for a lifetime of pain." She gets up as Bobby drops his cigarette on the floor. She crosses towards him, and presses his face between her breasts, caressing his head, tousleing his hair affectionately. She carefully ties his arm back to the chair, and it's then that he notices the syringe in her hand. "Haven't you wondered why you've been passing out every few hours or so?"

"Pain and loss can do that to a man," Bobby says, trying hard not to shake.

"So can Fentanyl," Claire says. "It's a—"

"It's a strong painkiller," Bobby says.

"Oh yes, I forgot, you know everything," Claire sneers.

"Why?" Bobby asks.

"Why the Fentanyl?" Claire asks. "Because I'm pumping you full of narcotics. In a few days you'll have enough of it in your system."

"Enough for what?"

"Enough to pump you full of Naloxone," she says with a small smile.

"An opiate-blocker," Bobby says, with a sense of growing dread.

"Having an opiate-riddled body suddenly deprived of the opiates," Claire grins at him. "You can't imagine the pain." She stops and looks down because Bobby is looking up at her with those soft brown unreadable eyes of his.

"But you can," he says.

"Yeah," Claire says, her voice strange and unemotional. "I do. It's how I got myself off the habit in med school."

"It must have been excruciating," Bobby says. Claire gives him a sharp look. It almost sounds like sympathy in his voice.

"It was," she says. "But I can handle pain."

"So can I," Bobby says.

/

_A/N: If this is too disturbing for a T rating, just let me know. When we get to the actual full-on smut, I'll warn you, but child abuse isn't exactly teen reading material._


	16. The Note

_A/N: sorry about the long interlude. I've been having medical problems. But I'm back and trying to make up for lost time! Read and Review plz!_

//

After an exhaustive three and a half hour search, Eames sits down on Bobby's couch and learns forward, drained, face in hands. Her burns ache relentlessly, but not as much as the ache she's feeling from somewhere deeper. Desperation tugs at her chest. No clues. Not a single thing out of place, as far as she knew. Some of the deeper inner recesses of Bobby's apartment had remained a mystery to her (she hadn't had, for example, much opportunity to memorize the contents and layout of her partner's bedroom or master bath.) But to her knowledge, nothing was missing or added. Not one thing stuck out as worthy of notice. She blinks back tears, viciously wishing she could focus. But she is too tired, too hungry, too hurt.

Mike Logan comes into the room and cautiously sits next to her.

"Chinese Take-out will be here in fifteen," he says, laying a gentle hand on her shoulder. She looks at him gratefully.

"Thanks Mike I—I'm pretty empty right now," she confessses.

"Is there anything else you want?" He asks. "Goren's got some old Percosets in the bathroom if you're in pain." She shakes her head wearily.

"No, if I take one of those I'll be out like a light before the food even gets here. We need to keep looking." Now it's Mike's turn to shake his head.

"I don't know where else to look," he says, sounding hollow. "CSU went over the scene of the explosion with a fine-toothed comb, and that was amost a week ago. Ditto the girl's apartment. Claire's. She cleaned the place out. Smart chick."

Eames looks down at her hands. Claire. She still can't wrap her mind around the concept. Nicole's daughter. Nicole's sister. She had thought of Nicole as in relentless pursuit of a perfect, unblemished family. How much would this relic of her tragic past bother and distort her already disturbed mind. It would be as if this girl's mere existence was a snub to her lifelong quest. _You have a family, and I am it_, she could hear the girl saying, in her meek, queer little voice. _Look at me. Acknowlege me. I am the embodiment of everything you are running away from_. And in her mind, Eames can imagine the girl, with her blonde hair framing her face. She can imagine her sitting in the dark, listening for her father's footsteps in the hall. She can imagine her waiting in the parking garage for the moment when Bobby closed the car door. But she couldn't imagine why. She knew Nicole kept showing up because she was in love with Bobby. Even in the beginnning, when her feelings for her partner were still unacknowleged, still budding, she bristled inwardly at Nicole's blatant flirtation. But why Claire? Could Claire concievably be in love with Bobby, too? After only one brief meeting? It must run deeper than that. But Alex's brain is wiped out. She runs a hand over her forehead. The doorbell rings.

"Mike," she calls, "the food is here." She watches as he comes striding out of the bathroom to the door. He pays, and brings in the gigantic bag. "For goodness sakes, Mike," she says, "did you invite all of Major Case over for dinner? The Yankees? You can't possibly eat all of this."

"Oh-ho," Mike says, shooting her a devious grin. "You obviously don't know me very well. Just call Wheeler. She'll tell you." He rummages through the bag, bringing out cartons of lo-mein and a few greasy bags of eggrolls. Food keeps piling up on the table. Then he stops.

"Uh, Eames," he begins, looking down at the bag. "There's a note here. Addressed to you. Just how often do you eat at this place?" Eames looks at him in consternation and crosses to the bag.

"Not…not that often," she says, peeking in. There is a white envelope at the very bottom, blotched with grease stains. Her name is written on it in elegant script. She picks it up. "Huh," she says, tearing it open. Inside is one line, printed. It's an address. There it is, in stark black and white.

**255 Grant St.**

**Red Hook, NYC 11215**

**Hurry.**

**-NW**

Logan was looking over her shoulder, frowning.

"NW," he mused. "Is that who I think it is?" Alex was staring at the note, transfixed.

"It must be," she says, trying to keep the tremor out of her voice. "She's trying to help us," she says wonderingly.

"Beauty, brains, a complete psycho," says Logan, quietly. "And useful, too." He starts, pulling back, as Alex wheels on him, her face a strange mix of sadness, excitement, and black rage.

"We've got to go," she says, pulling at his arm. Then she stops, and pierces him with her gaze. "If we get there in time," she says, "don't mention the note to Bobby." Logan stares at her, and nods slowly. "Never mention it," she says, staring him down.

"My lips are sealed," he says seriously. "Now let's go."

//

At the warehouse, in the dark, Bobby opens his heavy eyelids slowly. The drugs in his system are beginning to take over his mind. He can almost feel his neurons slowing. Random firings, the beginnings of his brain degrading. He fights to keep from falling back into the darkness. Claire is looming over him, seemingly huge. He shrinks back, involuntarily. She has a needle in her hand. He fights for speech. He hasn't bathed in days, and the rank odor of his sweat and fear mingles with the scent of her craziness, a feral scent that hangs in the air, nauseating him.

"No," he whispers. She draws away, and her eyes are soft, mirroring the single light above him.

"No, detective?" she asks one eyebrow drawing up in a sardonic gesture. "Well," she says, "have it your way. One more day more or less won't make much of a diference."

The relief that floods through Bobby is dulled, too, by the narcotics running through his system. But as he slips into unconciousness he hears her whisper.

"Tomorrow"

//


	17. Confrontation

A/N: _Ah, we come to the climax. Well, the first climax, anyways. __**wink wink**__. Anyways, I used to live in Brooklyn, but I don't know anything about Red Hook, so I just made up street names. Apologies._

//

Logan is on the phone, barking for backup in a voice that sounds tense with both fear and excitement. As Alex jams her foot to the gas pedal, she feels the pit of her stomach drop a little. It is as if her heart is speeding ahead of her, already with her partner, her love like a taut string pulling her towards him.

"Turn right at Cabot street," Logan says, pausing from his cellphone. "Looks like the address is an abandoned warehouse." He looks over at Alex, taking in her white little face, her hands gripping the steering wheel so hard that the muscles in her forearms bulge. "Hey," he says gently. She doesn't respond. "Hey," he says, a little louder, laying a gentle hand over hers. Her shoulders reflexively twitch and she shoots him a quick glance. "It's ok, Eames," Logan says. "We've got the jump on this crazy bitch. He'll be fine." Eames stares straight ahead, concentrating on weaving through the traffic, driving at least twice the speed limit.

"I hope so," she whispers, so quietly that Logan has to strain to hear her. "I couldn't stand it, Logan. I can't—"

"Hey," he says again, and pauses. "I understand." And, finally, she looks at him, and sees that, in fact, he does.

//

Bobby wakes again in the night, startled by a noise. He peers into the darkness, his mind fighting to stay awake, stay alive. As his eyes become adjusted to the light, he sees Claire's outline across the room. She stares at him, and for a moment he can't tell if she is actually seeing him. He jerks backward as she slowly walks towards him, moving languidly, almost sensually. He flinches again when he sees that she's carrying a syringe. She notices this, and laughs, low in her throat.

"Don't worry detective," she says, taking a seat across from him. "This is for me. Yours will come soon enough." She ties up around her upper arm, and slowly pushes the plunger, her body relaxing, a blissful expression crossing her face, fleetingly. She clenches her fist, and then slowly unclenches. She smiles at him, her pupils dialating. The syringe drops from her hand to the floor.

Bobby blinks at her, trying to will his brain to focus. "What are you doing?" He asks, knowing full well what she is doing.

"You know what I'm doing," Claire says sharply. "I'm getting high. And it's marvelous. You know, I can't believe I ever stopped."

Bobby, still groggy, tries to wrap his mind around this. "But," he says, his voice infused with genuine confusion, "why would you start again after all the pain you went through—" he stops, a horrible realization beginning to creep through his brain. He feels fear tense him up. "You're going to kill yourself," he says flatly. Claire gives him a long look, her face unreadable.

"Now why would you say that?" she asks, her eyes hazy, head lolling to one side. Her guard is clearly down, the heroin surging through her bloodstream. Bobby knows this is a chance. He can get through to her when she's like this. His brain, his most trusted instrument, can save him. He just has to focus. He has talked people out of crazy things before. Hell, he has talked people out of killing him before. If he could only think clearly. He knows, he _knows_ that if she is planning on killing herself, he comes first.

"Claire," he says, "you're killing yourself, why, to get revenge on Nicole?" From the look on her face he knows he's right. She's going to kill herself so that the mother who never loved her, the mother who left her to suffer for all those years will lose another daughter. And she will kill him so that she will lose the man she loves.

"Nicole doesn't care if I live or die," says Claire, trying to be nonchalant, but her face betrays her. He sees all the hurt, the sadness, the rage, the craziness. It all shines out in that moment, and then she closes up again.

"That's not true," Bobby says with conviction. "Nicole already lost one child. And I saw the effect it had on her. She's destroyed. And if you kill yourself, you'll just open up the wound. You'll just make her hurt more innocent people."

Claire tries to laugh. "What do I care?" she says. "I want to hurt her as much as possible. That's why I'm killing you. She doesn't deserve someone to love." She stands up, pacing. "I said before that I loved you. What a joke. I hate you. I hate you more than I've ever hated anyone, except Nicole." Her voice rises into a near scream. "How dare you give her reason to love you?" she shrieks into his face. He fights to keep his eyes calm.

"Claire, I don't love Nicole," he begins, but she cuts him off.

"I don't care. She loves you, that's all that matters," she says. "She doesn't deserve to feel love."

Bobby shakes his head. "Everyone deserves to feel love," he murmurs gently. "Even you, Claire. It's a tragedy that you've never had that feeling. But life isn't fair, and you can't make it fair this way."

Claire approaches him, and puts her lips near his ear. "But I did love someone," she says. "I loved my father. And Nicole killed him. She took the man I loved, and I'll do the same to her. And none of your bullshit psychobabble can stop me." She laughs, and licks his ear, lightly. "No wonder Nicole loves you," she says. "How can you be such a nice guy when life has used you up and spit you out, just like me?"

Before Bobby has a chance to respond, about how his life is about choice, and about how she can choose to do the right thing just like he does, there comes a sudden, loud noise from somewhere in the vast darkness beyond them. It sounds like a door slamming open.

//

Alex rushes into the warehouse, followed by Logan, who hadn't even tried to get her to wait for backup. The place is a pit of darkness, and her thin flashlight beam illuminates rotting plaster walls, moldy planks of wood on the floor, complete emptiness, except for a small pool of light coming from a closed door across the huge, still room. She draws her gun and runs forward, throwing the door open and shouting "Police!" Her gun is pointed straight at Claire, and she takes a deep breath when she sees that Claire is also pointing a gun, straight at her parnter. Bobby looks battered, tired, and horribly, horribly tortured. It's not just the blood or the bruising, it's the look in his eyes. Like a star that is dying. He looks at her desperately and she sees his lips move, tracing her name in silence.

//

Bobby looks up at Claire, who's arms are shaking. He sees her eyes, full of unshed tears.

"Shit," Claire says, and then, without looking at him, gun barrell pressed against his head, her eyes glued to Eames, she whispers "I'm sorry,"

//

The gunshot rings through the air, followed by another one, and a piercing, inhuman scream. Alex realizes that it's her. She's screaming, as she watches both her partner and his captor slump down, hot blood spreading around them, coming from their intermingled wounds.

//

_A/N: Ooh. Suspense._


	18. Good News, Bad News

_A/N: Don't worry!_

//

Alex crosses the room on pure adrenaline, her vision sharp and her nerves staticky and electric. She reaches Bobby in seconds, and turns him over to cradle his head, noticing with sick horror at the red, raw marks around the electrical tape that secures his wrists—and at the sickly, deflated look of his body, the bruises and faint, yellow pallor of his skin.

"Hold on, Bobby," she says, her voice a hushed whisper. "It's going to be ok," she says, feeling a huge wedge of frustration and anxiety in her chest. From the looks of her partner, it's definitely _not_ going to be ok. The left side of his head is a sticky, ruined mess, bright with blood and chips of bone. Alex rips her coat off and presses it against him, trying to staunch the flow of blood. She knows that head wounds bleed like crazy, but even so. _So much blood_, she thinks, blankly.

Logan rushes over to her. "I've got an ambulance on it's way," he says. Then, looking down at Bobby's broken body, "Jesus," he mutters, clearly thrown.

"Oh, God, Logan," Eames says, not taking her eyes off of her partner. "Look at him." Logan crouches down and places a warm hand on her shoulder.

"Listen," he says, "Goren will be ok. He's a figher. He's the strongest guy I've ever met, and I come from Queens." Eames gives him a quavering, thankful half-smile.

"He _is_ strong," she affirms, "but he's had so much pain. He's suffered all his life, and lately…" her voice drops off, and her eyes sting. Logan falls silent next to her, and they both listen to the rapidly approaching sirens in the dark.

//

The frantic ride to New York Methodist passes in a blur of spent energy and terrified exhaustion. She rides clinging to Bobby's hand, her face a mask of misery and worry. She doesn't notice the occasional sympathetic glances from various medics trying to get Bobby into stable condition.

Once inside the hospital, Bobby is whisked away by shouting doctors, and Alex is stranded, bereft, in the profoundly depressing, flourescent-lit waiting room. She sits, unsteadily, in a chair next to a large, pale woman who is weeping steadily. The blurred faces of the other waiting room occupants look strangled, pallid. Alex feels like this is some kind of special, hellish limbo, where the scared relations of direly ill people come to languish in a stew of worry and grief. Her dark thoughts are interrupted by Logan, who folds his long frame into a chair on the other side of her. He crosses his legs and looks at her, his face sympathetic.

"Deakins will be here in fifteen minutes," he announces. Then, quietly, "Claire was dead the second she hit the ground, according to the EMTs."

Alex shakes her head. So much death.

"They found an empty syringe near her body," Logan says, "there were traces of heroin inside. And something strange," he stops, suddenly, looking slightly agitated.

"What?" Alex asks, looking over at him, concerned at the look on his face.

"A full syringe," he states flatly. "Full of something they haven't identified yet. It tested negative for heroin, cocaine, and everything else. They have it at the lab now. I told them to call me when they got results."

"She was going to use it on Bobby," Alex asks, feeling sick in the pit of her stomach.

"It's likely," Logan says with a sigh. "But there's no way of knowing."

//

Alex has been drifting in and out of a hazy sleep when she is jolted awake by Deakins laying a fatherly hand on her shoulder. She struggles to sit upright, her eyes bleary.

"Captain," she says, her voice sounding small and far away. Deakins takes the now vacated chair beside her. He looks as worried as she feels, and she feels a wave of tenderness towards him.

"Eames," he says. "Any news of our boy?" This sudden familiarity brings tears to her eyes. His obvious affection towards Goren is a welcome injection of warmth. He would love to know how well he is loved_. If only he wakes up again_, Alex thinks desperately_. I'll tell him how much I love him. I'll tell him that Logan and Deakins love him. I'll wrap him in love until he can't feel his demons anymore_. To the captain, she simply says,

"Not yet, sir." And bites her lip. Deakins pats her hand, reassuringly.

"Goren will pull through this," he says. "He's too stubborn to let go."

Alex smiles wanly at him. Sometime later, Logan returns with three coffees , one of which she accepts gratefully. Despite this caffeinated boost, she drops back into her half-sleep. She wakes to the sound of her name.

"Alex Eames?" The tall, graceful doctor is saying to the nearly empty room. Deakins is gone, as is Logan. She sits up quickly.

"Yes?" she asks, trying to keep her voice from trembling.

"Are you next of kin?" the doctor asks, looking askance.

"I'm his medical proxy," Alex says, hackles rising.

"Well, then" the doctor says, sounding more human, "why don't you step out of the room with me.

"Do you have news?" Alex asks once they are out in the hallway. The doctor smiles at her, and her heart lifts a little.

"I'm Doctor Hathaway," she says, her silver hair reflecting wierdly in the overhead light. She offers her hand, and Alex shakes it distractedly.

"Alex Eames," she introduces herself. "I'm Bob—Detective Goren's partner." The doctor nods her head.

"Miss Eames, I have some good news," she says, and Alex feels excitement and nerves rise in her throat.

"I also have some not-so-good news," says the doctor matter of factly. "Why don't we have the good news first. That's always best, isn't it?"

Alex nods mutely.

"Mister Goren was extremely lucky." The doctor says, nodding her approval. "The bullet should have gone clear through his brain, but, due to the angle, the bullet glanced against his skull and exited the body just below the left ear. It never entered the brain at all."

Alex feels like she's going to collapse with the strength of her relief. It takes a visible effort for her to remain standing and not to burst into tears. The doctor, seeing her state, puts a stabling hand on her arm.

"Miss Eames?" she says, her voice soft and calm. "There's something else. The not-so-good news. Some bone chips from his injury have lodged in the white matter of his brain. He's going to survive, but he may have lasting brain damage. As it is," she pauses and her clear grey eyes look straight at Eames. "He's in a coma."

//


	19. Damages

_A/N: Medical dramas aren't exactly my thing, but that's where the story took me. Btw, I got a measly amount of comments on my last chapter. No good?_

//

Eames feels the words hit her like a punch to the stomach. She lets her breath out in an audible rush. The stately doctor is looking at her with an expression of concern.

"When—how…" Eames can't properly convery the massive flood of questions that come to mind.

"Well," the doctor says, "it wouldn't be so bad, but we found massive levels of the painkiller Fentanyl in his bloodstream. He was probably overdosing at the time of the shooting. He has acute opiate toxicity, which is contributing to the shutdown of his brain functions." The doctor notices the confusion filling Alex's eyes. "I noticed a patch on his back," she says. "It looks like whoever had him confined was keeping him quiet with narcotics." She shook her head. "If it hadn't been for that, he'd probably be awake right now."

"How long until he recovers?" Eames asks, trying to keep her voice steady. The doctor shakes her head again.

"There's no way of knowing exactly. I'd be hesitant to say the coma will last more than a few days. But he's malnourished, plus the overdose, it could be as long as a few weeks. But you have to realize—there's a high probability that he will recover, although…" her voice trails off, and then resumes with professional stability. "There is a fifty-fifty chance that there will be some lasting brain damage. No knowing how severe." She reaches out and rests one dry hand on Alex's shoulder. "I'm sorry," she says, sounding sincere. Alex is blinking back tears. She can't imagine how Bobby would feel, waking up to realize that his brain, his powerful, beautiful mind, had betrayed him. He would be crushed.

"Can I see him?" She whispers. The doctor gives her a kind, sad smile.

"Come with me," she says.

//

As Eames enters the room, she takes an involuntary step forward, making a small sound. Bobby lies on the bed, looking deathly pale. The top of his head is covered in mummy bandages, and he's breathing through a tube, a mechanical hiss rhythmically pumping air into his chest. She sits down shakily on the visitor's chair, and reaches out for his cold, limp hand. The tears that have been aching to get out, now pour down her face. She is wracked with hiccuping sobs, which she tries to muffle, unsuccessfully. As she fights to get control over herself, she reaches her other hand up to stroke Bobby's face, her fingers caressing his cheek. She bites her lip against another wave of unchecked weepiness.

"My God, Bobby," she says, her warm breath dusting him. She lifts his hand to her mouth, and presses her lips against him, closing her eyes. "You've got to get better," she mumbles against his skin. "I need you to get better. I—" she takes a deep breath. "I love you. You are my partner, my life, my other half." She looks up at him, at the stillness of his body, so unnatural for one so restless and full of burning energy. Then she lays her face down and, full to the brim with exhaustion, falls into a deep, black sleep. She doesn't dream.

//

Logan comes into the room, hours later. He looks down at Eames' sleeping form, her head nestled in the crook of her partner's arm, an infinite tenderness passing between them. The corner of his mouth tweaks up, a little. _Well_, he thinks _well well well_, _good for them._ Leaning down, he gently shakes Eames awake. She blinks sleepily up at him.

"Hey," he says, keeping his voice low. "Why don't you go home and get some sleep? I can take the midnight watch." He is not entirely surprised when she shakes her head, a grim look crossing her face.

"I'm staying," she says. "For as long as I can." She gives him a look. "I'm _fine_, Mike." She says, sounding a little exasperated at the worried look on his face.

"I know you are," Logan says wrily. "And to tell you the truth, I didn't think for a minute you'd leave the boy genius here alone with a delinquent like me." He grabs the chair next to her. "But," he says slyly, reaching into a Duane Reade bag next to him, "if you're gonna stay, you'll have to teach me how to play Sudoku."

For the first time in days, Alex Eames looks at Logan and her wan smile turns into a short, but geniune, laugh.

//


	20. Consciousness

_A/N: Happy Holidays everyone! I'm going to rent the movie "Happy Accidents." Has anyone seen it? Is it any good?_

//

The next three weeks pass in a blur of anxious days, filled with bedside vigils, and sleepless, interrupted nights under the washed-out hospital lights. Deakins, Logan, Lewis, and even Carver come to visit, and Alex has to give them all wan, brave smiles, which all of them see through immediately, knowing how much Bobby's condition is affecting her. Her parents come to visit. Her Mom rushes in, clucking at Alex's bedraggled condition, filled with soothing, comforting, ultimately meaningless platitudes. Her father is a rock of stability, standing soberly over Bobby's body. Alex hugs him so hard he jokes that she has broken three of his ribs. Then he places a bowl of orchids at Bobby's bedside. He sweeps his eyes over the room, taking in Alex's exhausted, trembling body sitting close to her partner, holding his hand. Also Bobby's still form on the bed, looking pale and somehow small, which was quite a feat. John Eames liked Bobby Goren. They had met several times during informal family dinners. He had gone to Goren's mother's funeral. He found the big detective to be empathetic, intelligent, and deeply generous. He was secretively grateful that his daughter had been paired with someone who matched her so well. And also secretively aware of the growing unprofessional feelings between them. He knows how much Bobby has aggravated Alex, and how much she is still deeply attached to him. He sighs. This will be a long road, if Bobby survives. And if he doesn't—even longer. She has already lost a husband to an early death. If she loses her partner, he doesn't know if she will ever recover. His jaw clenches, as he prays inside for Bobby to recover. His wife insists on taking Alex to lunch, but she stays only long enough to be polite, rushing back after half an hour to be by Bobby's side again. As they walk to the parking lot, John Eames looks at his wife.

"I hope—" he begins, and his wife, a strong, sympathetic woman, places a hand on his arm.

"I know," she says, and he sees a tear escape from her lowered lids.

//

Lewis visits again on the first Monday of the third week of Bobby's coma. He stays for an hour, trying with all his might to make Alex laugh. He leaves with slumped shoulders, so obviously distressed by both Bobby and Alex's conditions, that she feels like following him out into the hall and apologizing—but somehow, she can't bring herself to leave Bobby's. She rests her head by his side, and cries in shaking, silent sobs. Then, she feels his arm move. It's subtle, but she's pressed so close that she feels it, and her head jerks up, adrenaling rushing through her system so suddenly that she feels faint. She finds herself looking up into Bobby's sleepy, kind eyes. Her shock is so immense that she doesn't notice that she's still heaving huge, breathless sobs. He looks down at her.

"Why are you crying?" He asks in a rusty voice, his own eyes filling with tears. Oh god, he thinks. She's not dead. His chest hitches, and the tears spill down his cheeks. "Why are you crying?" he asks again, because Eames has her mouth open but doesn't seem able to speak.

//

A nurse rushes in the room, followed closely by the stately Doctor Richards who has been checking in every day. Neither Bobby nor Eames has time to say what they really want to say, before the room is crammed full of medical staff, taking his temperature, performing tests. So they just stare at each other, oblivious to the uproar surrounding them. Neither can figure out what to say. The doctor hovers over Bobby.

"Do you know where you are?" She asks.

"The hospital," Bobby answers, looking around.

"Good, detective," the doctor moves in front of him. "What is the last thing you remember?"

"I, uh," Bobby pauses. "I was in a room. I heard…Eames…and then just, you know, blackness."

"Ok," the doctor says. "Can you move your right arm?"

Bobby lifts his arm up a little. The doctor smiles at him. "Very good," she says. "Your left arm?"

Bobby looks at her. She clears her throat. "Your left arm?" she says.

"I'm lifting it," Bobby says looking confused. The doctor nods, with a grim look on her face.

"How about your right toes? Can you wiggle them?" Bobby's left toes start to move. "No," the doctor says, quietly. "Your _right_ toes." Again, Bobby looks at her in confusion. "I _am_ lifting my right toes," he says, and then, suddenly, starts to look scared. "Aren't I?" He says, his voice rising.

"Just relax," the doctor murmurs. "It looks like you have a…a slight frontal lobe apraxia. It will…it will probably go away in time. It usually does. You'll just have to do some rehab here to regain consciousness of your muscle movements on your left side."

Ales is sitting speechless during this whole exchange. She feels a tremendous weight being lifted from her, as she watches Bobby move, and talk. He's alive. He's conscious. But the disablity that he's experiences worries her tremendously. She knows how deeply Bobby depends on his senses. He must feel so lost.

At the same time, Bobby is feeling completely overwhelmed. Alex is alive, and sitting next to him, looking at him with affection and obvious relief. He is simultaneously filled with joy and dread. What if he can't walk? How is he going to be able to function? To work?

The doctor looks at him closely, then at Alex. "Well," she says. "you seem to be doing well. Better than I expected, really. There's nothing more I can do now. Just rest. If you need a tranquilizer to help you sleep, just ring for the nurse."

With that, she gives him a warm smile, which he returns, rather half-heartedly. Then she exits the room, leaving Bobby and Alex alone.

//


	21. Talk to her

_A/N: Thank you so much for all your reviews. It really gets me into the Christmas spirit, you know? Anyways, this chapter was excedingly difficult to write because of the changed Goren/Eames dynamic. Oh, also, I stole a line in this from a Nero Wolfe novel. Forgive me._

//

They are alone. The sterile hospital room seems echoingly empy. Bobby is looking at her with such intensity that Eames feels her cheeks flushing. The look is shot through with aching desire, loss, and desperation. He looks so…lost. She watches as his eyes slowly mist over with tears that he's obviously fighting against. She can tell, she _knows_ that it's only the strong force of personal will that's keeping him from falling completely apart. He opens his mouth, and then closes it again.

"Bobby," she says, reaching out a hand towards him, and then stopping, abruptly, when he flinches away from her. She feels her own tears welling up. Bobby keeps staring at her with that look. _Oh god,_ he thinks. _What's wrong with me? This is Eames. It's Alex. It's the woman that I love._ He knows that it's only Post Traumatic Stress, that his body is instinctively reacting with fear and anxiety, his feelings of hypervigilance and severe stress would last. There would be flashbacks, night terrors—he would re-live the scene over and over in his mind. He remembers Claire's touch. The feeling of her friction against him. His helplessness in the face of her advances. Shame. He feels it course through him, and he drops his gaze down, staring at his one useful hand, twisting the sheets restlessly. He can't look at Eames. He's sure she can tell. She's always been the best at seeing through him, grounding him when his mind flies a little too high and wide. He still can't bring himself to look at her. He aches so much inside. He feels broken, afraid, and still painfully aware that the woman that his heart belongs to is sitting beside him, imploring him to talk to her. Talk to her. _Talk to her._

"Alex," he says, his voice dry and cracked. The tears in her eyes spill hotly down her face, and he feels the tears welling in his own eyes to match. "You're here," he says, not knowing what else to say. And then… "You're..alive." Then his tears fall, too, and he cant keep her from seeing him fall apart. The tears turn into a slight shaking. His thoughts start racing. He can't move his left side. He's parilyzed, he can't move. He's a prisoner. He's always been a prisoner. To his past, to his mind, to his family. His breath hitches, and catches in his throat. He can't breathe. He feels his heart racing, a heady ponding in his temples. He faintly hears Alex worriedly calling his name, and then a nurse coming in. Then, nothing.

//

Alex stops breathing when Bobby finally looks up at her again. She looks deeply into his eyes, and sees a thousand emotions, each taking him farther and farther away from her, as his sobbing increases and he starts to hyperventillate. Panic flares in her stomach as his eyes roll back in his head, the whites showing, his heart pumping blood, fast, into his head. She cries his name, and a nurse runs in, looking flustered.

"Don't worry, miss," the nurse says. "He's having a panic attack." Another nurse hurries in. "10 milligrams, ativan, stat," says the first nurse, and then, to Alex, "We're going to give him a sedative and it will calm him down. He'll probably sleep for a few hours." The nurse injects him, and his frantic spasms calm down, until his head lolls back.

"Do you want to stay here?" The nurse asks, knowing full well what the answer is. She's seen the petite female detective every day for three weeks, and she hasn't budged from the seat next to her partner more than a few times.

"I'll stay," says Eames shortly, and as soon as the nurse is gone, she reaches out for her partner's hand. He's so cold. Tears start again in her eyes. _Why can't anything be easy for us?_

//

Bobby wakes up a few hours later, and gropes around for a minute, not knowing where he is. Then he feels a warm hand closing over his, and he is calmed, the cold sweat that had popped up on his forehead is drying in the warm hospital air. Alex is here. His eyes slowly focus on her. She is gazing up at him. His brain feels like mush from the tranquilizers, and he struggles to process a thought. He can't remember the last time his brain worked properly. Before the kidnapping, maybe? That night when he kissed her…that had been both a good decision and a bad one. He loved her. With all of his soul, he ached to be with her, but…there is always a but. His work. He loves his work, it is his life and he doesn't know if he can keep an inter-ofice relationship secret. He can just imagine pushing Alex against the wall after-hours. Kissing and biting the soft skin of her neck while she cries out his name…

"Bobby?" Alex's worried voice startles him out of his thoughts. "Are you ok? Can you hear me?" His eyes clear a little.

"Hi," he says, and he sees a wide, genuine smile spread across her face as she looks at him with deep affection.

"Hi yourself," she says, grasping his hand tighter. The smile fades a little, and he can see the worry through it. "I missed you," she says quietly.

Oh god, what should he say? That he cried out for her during the long, hazy nights of his abduction? That the news of her death struck him so deeply that he felt like he was bleeding inside? Like his whole body was a raw, open wound? That finding her alive left him breathless, unsure, and apprehensive all at the same time? That he wanted to grap hold of her and never let her go?

"I missed you too," he says, stroking her hand lightly with his thumb. Her skin is so soft… :"I…Claire told you were, uh, that you were dead," he says, against his own will. He has to make her know, somehow, why he is behaving the way he is. "I..you know, I thought she had killed you." He feels a stinging in his eyes, as he fights back more tears. _No more_, he thinks. _I've cried enough over this. It's over_. Inside, however, he knows that it's not over. That it won't be over until he confronts his rage, his sense of violation, his _feelings_. Alex is looking at him at first with shock, then with a dawning sympathy.

"Oh, god, Bobby. I'm sorry," she says. And he shakes his head.

"Not your fault," he mumbles.

"But still," she says, "I know how that feels." Her voice drops off. He shifts his eyes away from her, looking up at the ceiling.

"No," he says, "I don't think that you do." His voice sounds so hollow that Eames takes a breath. She knows that he's hurting, but she didn't know that so much of it was over _her_. She stuggles with her beating heart. She is sure he can hear it in the sudden silence of the room. The heart monitor beeps with monotonous regularity. She swallows. She is beginning to ger irrationally annoyed. Her conflicted feelings are giving her a headache. She loves Bobby. She can't imagine not spending every minute of her day with him. She wants him to take her in his arms. She wants to shake him for not trusting how she feels about him.

"Of course I do, Bobby," she says, and he notices the tightening in her voice. "For awhile when I was in the hospital, I thought you were dead." Her voice tightens even more now, as she's clearly on the verge of tears again. God, he doesn't want her to cry anymore on his behalf. "And afterwards, I didn't know if you were dead or alive. I didn't know where you were…" her voice breaks and she suddenly pounds on the bed, next to him. "So don't you dare say that I don't know what it feels like!" She shouts, suddenly, and then just as suddenly stops pounding and suddenly seems exhausted, resting her head on her hands, next to him. "I died inside, Bobby," she says, her voice muffled.

Bobby looks down at her. God, what a mess. What a mess his life is. He fights to control himself as he reaches a hand down, and gently strokes her hair. She makes a small sound, and turns her head towards him. He cups her face, gently, and she sits up, leans over him, and presses her lips over his, gently, chastely. His hands come up, bury in her hair, and then slide down to stroke her neck. He breaks the kiss, and she rests her forhead on his, as they lie there, inches away, in as much of a loss for words as either of them has ever been.

//

_A/N: Merry Christmas everybody!_


	22. Roommates

A/N: This is getting more and more difficult to write  I apologize in advance for some of the less savory content in this chapter. And by the way, I share none of "Al's" opinions (and I'm hispanic).

//

It is finally the day before Bobby's release day. He has to come back every week for physical therapy, but he's starting to regain control over his muscles, and despite looking much the worse for wear, he seems to Alex to be preternaturally cheerful. After all he's been through, she had expected him to shut down completely, to block her out and revert to his solitary self, full of self recriminations and needless blame. But no. He greets her every day with his boyish, charming smile. The one that makes her melt a little inside. This cheerfulness actually worries her a little. It seems like an avoidance technique, but she can't bring herself to bring it up with him. _Maybe when he settles in back to his apartment_, she thinks. _Maybe when he starts looking healthier, less pale and shaky_. Sometimes when she goes home to her empty apartment, she think back to that one stolen kiss, and she can't stop the tears from stinging at her eyes. Her love seems as if it's in suspended animation, and yet it's still tearing her in half. She thinks about Joe. How easy he was, how laid back, how they could always solve their problems with a raging fight, and then an equally passionate reconcilliation. But Bobby just isn't that kind of man. He is so damaged, so insecure, deep down, that it will take more than a soft stroke to his face, a gentle kiss, a bout of love-making to make him all better. She feels helpless. And it hasn't helped that for the past week he's been sharing his room with a vicious, neurotic banker as a roommate, despite all of her protestations to the doctor and the staff that he needed privacy to recover. This new roommate is also recovering, and posessed of such bizarrely irreconcilable opinions that Bobby has privately voiced to her that he wondered if it wasn't from some kind of hemispherectomy, or other extreme brain surgery. One pleasant afternoon, after Lewis has come and gone, the banker, named Albert (call him Al. No, really.) having watched Bobby's friend go, leans over and stage-whispers, in a voice louder than his normal speaking voice,

"Your friend a Jew?"

Bobby looks at him, startled. Without waiting for him to answer, Al goes on.

"Yeah, I knew it. See, I can tell. It's a gift. Comes in handy when you're working in the financials. Not that I have anything against them, they're handy at what they do. " He pauses, meditatively. "Not like the fucking hispanics. They come over here and do what? Serve us burgers? No fucking skills at all. Why we need to let them in here at all is a fuckin mystery to me." He looks over at Bobby again, and says, slowly, "no offense. I mean, you don't look hispanic to me or nothing." Bobby blinks at him.

"I'm, uh, I'm not?" He says, with a faint questioning air that surprise has injected into his voice against his will. The banker looks at him suspiciously.

"You're not, huh? Not married to one or anything? I didn't mean to step on your toes, buddy."

"It's…no I'm not married." Bobby decides to ease his rising tension by not butting heads with this particular specimen.

"So where's your family from, originally?" Al says, warming to the subject. "Italy," Bobby says, "and Germany." The banker looks at him again, sharply.

"German, huh? Not a Nazi are you, buddy?"

Bobby, who is by now too confused, shocked, and angry to speak, starts to shake his head. The banker's cellphone rings.

Al spends the rest of his week on the phone barking orders, or trying to bribe, placate, or outright threaten the staff to let him have a private room, extra painkillers, better food. On the first day that Eames comes to visit Bobby in his new room, she and Al almost come to blows. It's only the pained shake of Bobby's head that makes her calm down. Al simultaneously grunts in post-op pain, and Bobby rings his bell. The nurse comes in looking apprehensive, and Bobby says "Al, here, needs a shot of Demerol." The nurse gives him a knowing look and hurries out, with Alex close on her heels. Al grins at him.

"Thanks, Bob. Boy, that girlfriend of yours is a real ball-buster."

When the nurse comes back in with the painkiller, Bobby says "I'd like one too," in an infinitely tired voice. Then he turns to glance again at the tray next to Al's bed, at a photo of his noxiously-rich looking skeletal wife and bratty looking sons, teen-bully clones of their father.

"I'll tell you what, _Al_," he says, with an edge in his voice. "In the interest of the brotherhood of man, I'll make you a deal." Al starts to say something, but Bobby interrupts him, wanting to get the confrontation over with, hating the man for ruining the one bright point of his day. "The deal is, whenever my _partner_, detective _Eames_, comes to visit me, you leave her alone, You—" he cuts Al off again before the man can squeeze out a protest, his voice rising to it's full, intimidating presence, "you shut your mouth, and don't open it again until she leaves. You don't reference her, or ever speak about her to me or anyone else, do you understand?" Al looks at him, sullen and hunched.

"I can hear you, asshole, but I don't think you understand what a 'deal' is. See, where I come from, a deal involves one person doing something and the other guy doing something in return. And since you don't seem to have a lot to offer—"

"You didn't let me finish," Bobby says, his voice quieting down to a lean, predatory purr. "If you do as I say…I won't tell your wife that you have chylamidia." He leans back. The banker looks satisfyingly appalled.

"How the fuck—" his voice cracks. "Who have you been talking to?" Bobby almost smiles. The man has been with him constantly all week, and has heard every conversation he's had. All six or seven of them. Most with Eames, one with Lewis, one with the Captain. Not counting a few exchanges of words about meds and sleeping patterns with the nurses, that's the sum of it. Yet somehow his buddy Al thinks he's been sneaking around having the major case squad do a background check on his sex life. "How did you know?" Al demands.

"Al, " he says. "What can I say? It's a gift."

Then he draws his curtain around, and falls into a dreamless, Demerol-clogged sleep.

//

So now Al sleeps (or pretends to sleep) while Eames comes to pick him up. The doctor insists that he not be by himself for the next few weeks. His disability is too profound, as of yet, for him to be trusted with himself. Privately, Bobby hates this debilitating weakness that makes him a constant burden to others, specifically his partner. Isn't he enough of a burden to put up with, already, without the added gull of her having to watch over him like a mother hen? But for her benefit, when she shows up at the door with a wheelchair, he grits his teeth and puts on a cheerful, playful face.

"Lay on, Mcduff!" He says, once seated, and she swats him gently in the shoulder. They look at each other fondly for a bit, before the moment gets a little strained.

"Isn't it 'Lead on, McDuff?'" She asks, just to have something to say.

"Actually, in the original Shakespeare, it's 'lay on,' Bobby says, with his gentle professorial air, which to the wrong ears can come off as a bit pretentious. "But the phrase has been changed because the usage of 'lay on' to mean 'attack' isn't prevalent in the modern day lexicon. But—" he starts, and then looks up when he hears Eames chuckle.

"I'm sorry I asked," she says, sounding more amused than sorry.

"Well, anyways," he says, contrite, "let's get the hell out of here."

Once home, at her home, Alex leads his unsteady body towards the bed, and isn't terribly surprised when he starts to dig in his heels.

"Hey," she says, "you're the one here who needs to recover, not me."

He knows this is not strictly true, but doesn't say anything about it. She'll talk to him about her feelings when she's ready. That is how it has always been. But there have been times, especially recently, when she's failed to ever talk about her feelings. And those times have been increasing as the pressure on their partnership grows. In the inner recesses of his frustrated brain, Bobby knows that there will come a time where he will have to make some kind of move, open up to her a little, so that she cans start to feel more comfortable talking with him again. Only not now. His pain is too raw—too close to the surface. So, once more, Alex's feelings must take a back door to his own. _What a selfish bastard I am_, he thinks ruefully.

"But I fit much better on your couch," he protests. "You bed is just so BIG." He is gratified to see her smile.

"You're never going to let me have my way on this, are you?" She asks, with a consigned sigh.

"No," he says, wobbling over to the couch and falling back, hearing the springs give an alarmed twang.

"Careful," Eames says on the way to the kitchen. "I'd like to still have a couch when this is over. Otherwise I'll sit on YOU to watch tv."

He smiles at her back, knowing that if she wanted, he'd probably let her do that. Or anything.

//

After the chicken soup, he takes a pill, and, while they watch a Knicks game his eyes start to get sleepy. Eames notices this, and starts to get up, to let him have the couch for sleep. She's startled when one of his big hands comes up to grab her arm. She turns, and finds herself being watched by his big brown eyes. Eyes that, woozy with pain meds, look as sad and lost as a child's.

"Stay." He says simply. So she plops back down on the couch. His hand leaves her arm, and comes up around her shoulders, so she is pulled inexorably down to rest her head on his shoulder, laying in the space between his big frame and the couch_. Why does he have to be so goddamned comfortable_, she gripes to herself, before relaxing into this pose, staring fixedly into the television set, not knowing if he is watching her. He is, but after a few moments, his own head starts nodding, and then falls back, with a muffled clunk, to the wall. Eames stays like this, cuddling an unconscious Bobby, for half an hour, making sure he's asleep. Then she gently removes herself and goes down the hall. And cries herself to sleep.

//

A/N: _phew. Hopefully, the next chaper will be rated M. Oh, and don't think you've seen the last of our racist friend Al._


	23. Nightmare

A/N: I guess you can tell I may or may not have some experiences with nightmares.

_**This chapter is rated M for seriously adult content. You have been warned.**_

//

He can hear her screaming. The sound gets pierces his skull and makes his heart thud in his chest. _Eames. What are they doing to her?_ He is enveloped in darkness, a thick syrupy darkness that has no end. The scream comes again. He has to get to her. There is a pinpoint of light in the distance. He takes off at a run, his feet slipping a little in the darkness. _Eames._ The pinpoint of light seems to grow no larger. He has been running for hours—sweat drips off his face, his body heaves, the screams still haven't stopped. _They must be torturing her. Oh god. _He focuses on the light, forcing his feet to keep moving forward. The light starts to get bigger, it's shimmering intensity swarms up around him. He sees her. She is tied to a wooden slab in the middle of the pool of light. There is blood on either end of the makeshift table. Her eyes are closed, her face deadly pale. No more screaming. She is done screaming forever. _Get backup!_ His mind shrieks at him as he starts forward towards her. But no help comes out of the blackness as he starts towards her. At the edge of the pool of light, his feet stumble. He slips down, and gets back up, trying to get to her. But his legs won't work. He can't move them. The light is so strong. It blinds him. He tries again to get his legs up under him, but he falls back. Again and again. He has to get to her. Sobbing, mewling, he starts to crawl to her, but the light grows brighter, forcing him to shut his eyes. He hears a voice. _You aren't who you say you are, _he hears. _They're inside you. In your head. They've replaced you. They've taken my son! My son. I have two sons. Bobby, have you seen Frank? If he were here he'd know what to do. He'd fix this_. And he knows, now, that they are all there beside Eames. His mother. His brother. Jo Gage. Everyone he's ever let down. Everyone. They're there with her. Suffocating. He can smell the scent of decay and Pierre Lerritz. His mother's words buzz in his head as the true sense of his failure comes crashing down. _Bobby. Bobby_. He let Eames die. He couldn't save her, he—

His hand is gripping something, hard. He is covered in sweat and tears, his face contorted. It takes him a few seconds to realize that he's awake, the room is so dark. He hears a voice, close to him.

"Bobby! Bobby?"

It's Eames. His relief is so powerful that he has to lie back as it washes over him. His breathing starts to ease. He looks down and realizes that he's gripping her arm so tightly he's amazed he hasn't broken any bones. Immediately he lets go, shrinking back against the couch.

"Oh, God, Eames, I'm sorry," he says in a broken, hushed voice. Eames is leaning in close to him, worry and concern etched deep into her face. She had been woken up by his moaning, and had leant down to stroke his face, to wake him up from his nightmare. To hush the demons inside him. He had scared her with the force of his scream, the desperation and panic on his face when he finally woke up. The pressure of his hand encircling her arm was so intense that she had bitten her lip. She tasted blood. _Oh Jesus_, she thinks, looking down at her big partner, his face a mask of anguish and guilt. _Please help me fix this. How can this have become so broken?_ She leans over to stroke his face again, and he flinches away from her touch, involuntarily. They stay like that, a strange frozen tableau in the night, for a few seconds, before she reaches out again, and lets her small hand lie against his wet, unshaven cheek. And then it is as if everything inside him becomes unglued. She holds her sobbing partner against her for a long, long time.

//

It is three in the morning when he finally speaks to her. His sobbing has since trickled into nothingness, and he has remained silent, resting his face against her shoulder, his warm breath tickling against the back of her neck. She is rubbing small, soothing circles on the small of his back, unmindful of his weight against her. She had cried too, for a little while, overwhelmed by the intensity of his grief. She knows that her partner feels things deeply, knows how much he keeps inside, stifled, under tight reign, but still, she feels washed away by his tears. Her heart aches to be able to touch his, to relieve some of that great pressure.

"Did I hurt you?" He asks, turning his head to look up at her, his eyes glazed with pain and guilt. He sounds exhausted. She smiles a little, looking down at him.

"Oh, I might have a little bruise tomorrow, but it's not the end of the world," she says gently, still stroking his back, letting her hand softly run up and down the fabric of his t-shirt.

"I'm sorry," he says again, dropping his eyes.

"Hey," she replies, "it's not your fault. You were dreaming." She feels his body shudder a little against hers. "Are you ok?" she asks, knowing full well what the answer is.

"No," he says, his voice a little husky. Since the horror of the dream has dissipated, he has begun to feel the gentle pressure of her fingers, the soft, gardenia smell of her hair. He is trying to ignore the thrilling feeling of being so close to her. The proximity of their bodies is intoxicating, and his own body is responding, no matter how much he tries to stop it. "Yes," he contradicts himself. "I'm ok." His voice is little more than a restrained growl.

Eames feels his breath again on her neck, and flushes, a little. It is dark in the room, still, and, in the shock of Bobby's sudden collapse, she hasn't noticed how close they are. Now she does. She suddenly feels the body under her fingers, as she continues to stroke his back, and she feels his strong, broad chest pressing against hers as his breath flows through him. She catches her breath a little at the strong wave of desire that overcomes her as she slowly comes to her senses. Every touch seems potent. Every breath seems slower. She looks down at him and he is looking up at her, his eyes dark and dilated, desire and intensity smouldering in his gaze. She stops breathing all together, and bites her bottom lip, her eyes sketching over his face, his beautiful, sensual mouth, lips slightly parted.

Neither of them have the restraint for this. Not at this point. Bobby gently pulls her face down to his, his lips tracing gently over her forehead, then brushing against hers, so softly it is as if they're barely touching. Eames feels a hot rush of want shoot through her, warming her groin, her nipples hardening against his chest. As he feels this, Bobby moans against her mouth, and that is all it takes. He pulls her fully on top of him, her legs straddling his body, and she can feel his hardness press against her sensitive core. She presses back against him, and he groans again, feeling her hotness, feeling her want him. He takes her mouth in his, and she feels his tongue against hers, they press their mouths together, grind them together as she slowly rubs her body against his. Bobby can feel himself spinning out of control. He needs to restrain himself or else he will end this too early, and that is not what he wants. He wants Alex. He wants to hear her moan and scream his name. He wants her pleasure. He is kissing her neck, just under her ear, and he hears her soft groan of pleasure. Gently, slowly, he kisses his way down to just above the line of her tank top. He kisses the hollow of her collar bone, and then she strips the top off, and he stops for a second, just to admire her body. Her beautiful, smooth skin, the heft of her breasts, the rosy nipples. She leans back, closing her eyes, and he runs his hands over her shoulders, her back, and pulls her to him, his mouth catching one of her nipples, he sucks, gently, and then nips at her, feeling her clench against him.

"Bobby," she gasps, barely a breath, and rocks against him, needing to feel him inside her. His nimble, sensitive fingers play with her other breast, and then slide lower, dipping under the waistband of her shorts. She gasps his name again, and he rolls over, laying her gently down on the couch, his mouth still suckling and playing with her breasts. He slips the shorts off, and she slips his shirt off, running her hands over his chest, his arms, his back. She isn't wearing any panties under her shorts, and as Bobby brings his mouth back up to hers, he slips a finger inside her, her wet center. She is ready for him, and as he slides another finger in, she bucks against him, panting. His thumb is making small circles just over her nub, and he suddenly presses against it, kissing her hard, his tongue invading her mouth.

"God, Bobby," she breathes, as her hips raise up to his hand, as he skillfully strokes her core, his thumb moving away from her clit. She is at the crest of an orgasm, everything is sensitive, and he withdraws his hand, leaving her painful, aching for him. "I want you," she says, her voice a deep, husky version of its former self.

"You want me?" Bobby whispers, his lips tickling her ear.

"God, yes," she says, letting her hand brush against his erection, which is straining at the fabric of his pants. His breath hitches as he presses against her, lets her stroke him through the fabric. God. If she continues doing that…He kisses his way down her body, until he reaches the place where his hand had been. Gently he enters her with his finger, again, then another, stroking her walls, and then he lets his tongue invade her, tasting her juices, and pressing gently on her clit. She gasps, louder this time, and he lets his tongue work around her nub, as his fingers probe her insides. He feels her whole body clench and knows she's close. His fingers start to work inside her, harder, and he continues licking, and sucking her, letting his tongue flick over her clit, as she starts to arch her body into an orgasm, her moans turning louder, as he presses against her most sensitive spot, his tongue still working as he feels her convulse around him, her hips bucking frantically into him until she dissolves limply beneath him, her breath easing. She lays there for a few seconds, letting the back of her hand stroke his arousal before she reaches up and pulls Bobby down so she can kiss him, gently, letting her lower body press against his, increasing the pressure until he takes a breath, a groan ripping through him.

"Do you want me?" He whispers again to her, and again she replies yes, arching her body against his hardness, running her hands down his stomach to dip below his waistband, enjoying the hitch in his breath when her fingers brush his naked skin, stroke along his length. His breath is ragged as he speaks her name out loud, as the tugs down his pants. Now it is her turn to gasp a little as she sees the evidence of his arousal. He is so big. She has often imagined that this is true, in the shower, or at an inopportune moment when her mind was wandering. Now here he is in front of her, and she takes her hand and uses it to guide him into her. As he enters her, he groans and presses his face against her neck. She strokes up his back, and, as he presses his full length into her, filling her completely, she digs her nails into him, arching her hips up to meet him. He moves slowly, stroking up into her with fluid grace, his fingers finding her clit once more, pressing against her with every movement. She feels herself again close to the edge, as Bobby starts to push into her more urgently, feeling his big cock inside her, his fingers playing with that small bundle of nerves that right now seem to be the center of the universe. He rocks into her, and she starts to come, feeling her muscles spasming, the universe shrinking to the size of their bodies, all of her consciousness voiding to the point of infinity, shooting over the edge, as she cries his name over and over, and feels him shoot inside of her, his hot seed filling her up, his big body pressing into hers, his cries simultaneous to her own.

They lie like this for a long time, intertwined, his fingers caressing her side, her back, running up to her face and cupping it, kissing her nose, her eyelids, and her mouth. Short, gentle kisses that linger. She strokes his jaw, his neck, pressing his forehead to hers.

"I love you," Bobby whispers.

"I've loved you forever," Alex replies.

They lie like this until, one after another, like winking stars, they fade out of the world, slipping into the dark recesses of sleep. This time, it is uninterrupted by dreams.

//


	24. Interlude

A/N: Really sorry about the long delay. Lots has been going on. Got a full time job, a boyfriend, and an apartment. On the down side, I also have an undiagnosed condition that is incredibly painful. I feel like I'm on an episode of house. It's been months, an no one can tell me what's going wrong. On another note, I just want to send my sympathies to Infinity Star and her daughter. I too have bi-polar disorder, and now this other condition, which is most likely fibromyalgia. I understand the pain, but I also want her to know that there is a lot of strength to be found when you find yourself beset by such problems. There is hope. I wish her well. Her writing has brought me a lot of joy. There are all sorts of inexplicable symptoms. But on to the good stuff. This chapter is rated mild M.

//

Goren wakes up with a feeling he can only describe as akin to survivors guilt. Although no one but him suffered, and the only one who died was a murdering psychopath, he still can't shake the feeling that he could have done more. Done something. So much pain. He becomes slowly aware of the warm body beside him, snuggled up between him and the couch. Slow, strong emotions engulf him. A deep welling of love takes hold of his body, and his hold on her tightens. At the same time, a myriad of other, deeper feelings shake his core. Guilt, for one. He and his problems has caused Eames so much pain. Unnecessary pain. If she had another partner, her life would be simple. She would never have been kidnapped, never had to search for him, her desperate love driving her onward, causing sleepness nights and unending angst. His downward spiral was hers to deal with. At the same time, she loved him. She truly loved him. She had proven her love time and again, but last night, that had been…what…a revelation. A redemption. His eyes sting. It has been so long since he has felt a love this strong, reciprocated. His Dad hadn't loved him, he had treated him like a nuisance, an errand boy, and, at times, a punching bag. His mother loved him, but it was a distorted love. A love of funhouse mirrors and shadows. He had never felt secure with her love, although he loved her with a painful, childlike obsession. His brother had been a lost cause since his early teens. There was no love there, and never would be, now. Apart from a handful of passionate but emotionally apathetic girlfriends, and Lewis, his only true friend, there had never been love in his life. He had once heard that a man's soul could die if he wasn't loved enough. But he had survived. Because of Eames. She had been his soul's only tether. He runs his hand lightly over the soft skin of her side, and grasps her hand lightly in his. She responds by moaning sleepily, and squeezing his finger. She shifts around, awkwardly, until her face, her beautiful, honest, loving face, is tipped up towards him.

"Hi," she says, with a slow, lovely, shy smile. Her body presses into him, the feeling of her naked body against his causing a stirring in his groin.

"Hi," he says back, feeling the happiest he has possibly ever felt, even though this happiness, like all of them, is tinged with sadness. What will become of this. Of them? Can they make this work. As if reading his mind, she leans up and gives him the gentlest of kisses.

"Bobby," she says, her voice a little unsteady. "I love you. Do you realize that?"

"Yes," he says, "but—"

She cuts him off. "No buts," she says, her voice strong. "I love you and you love me. Nothing else matters."

He brushes a stray hair off her face. "My job matters," he says. "So does yours."

"And what about our jobs?" She says, matter-of-factly. "I can work with you, you can work with me, and this, all this, this is nobody's fucking business except ours."

"For now, at least," he says, beginning to sink back into depression. "But somebody is bound to find out."

"For God's sakes, Bobby," Eames leans on one elbow, exasperated. "How many times have I seen you fool people into believing you're a clutz, or a clueless tourist, you name it. If you can fake it for suspects, you can fake it for the brass. And so can I. You know it."

"You're not thinking ahead," Goren says, unable to let it go. "What if, in the future, we-- " now he cuts himself off, afraid of what he might say. What if we don't want to keep it a secret? What if we want to get married? What if I want to spend my life with you, out in the open. No secrets. He doesn't permit himself to say this, though. Eames gives a small smile, reading his mind again.

"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it," she says, and wiggles her hips against his, causing another pleasant stirring in his groin. Then they press their lips together again, and all his thoughts dissappear into a mindless fire in his groin. His fingers search between her legs, and he finds a spot that makes her gasp. The kiss deepends, her tongue flicking lightly against his teeth, his tongue. He bites her lower lip, and she moans, grinding against his fingers, which are probing deeply inside her, his thumb pressing against her clit, rubbing and teasing. She groans, and bites his shoulder, and the rest of the morning passes in a frenzy of sweaty skin and a two very sizeable, barely muffled shouts of extasy.

//

After a few moments, hours later, Eames shakes herself a little, and declares herself first in the shower. Seconds later she emerges, smiling, holding up a bottle of Hermes body oil.

"No wonder you smell so good," she says, and then disappears again, leaving Bobby lying naked and bemused on his sofa.

While Eames showers, Bobby takes stock of things. They could do it, he decides, tentatively. They could pull it off at work, and, well, when the time came, they would just have to see what happened. Eames had told him once that he was a serial micro-manager, always looking a step ahead. This made him a miracle detective, but not a prime relationship candidate. If only he could turn his brain off. If only he could stop thinking about Claire's sad, crazy face. If only he could turn off the wave of despair when he thought of Nicole, her family, her trajedy. Part of him did love her. He repressed that part as much as he could, shoving it into the dark recesses of his mind, but every so often it surfaced, and he could see her face, right up against his, as she called him out about their intellectual equality. She was his dark mirror. He could see her, in his minds eye, his own life, had he taken a different past. Dull and misshapen, as if looking through dark steel, but it was him he saw in her. His other life. The one that could be. This is why he loved her. Because, in all truth, he knew he could have been just like her. Her partner in crime. Even though he knows just as well that she would stick a knife in his back just as easily as she rattled off phrases from Baudelaire. Even though she loved him, too. She probably loved him for the equal but opposite reason that he did. She probably hated him just as much as she loved him. It's never easy to see the road not taken, especially when her road ended in a dead end.

This train of thought ends abruptly as Eames steps out from the shower, enticingly damp and warm, her wet hair dripping down her back. As he gets up and moves towards her, stripping for his shower, he stand behind her, revelling in the heat that radiates from her body. He reaches for a breast and slowly teases a nipple.

"You're insatiable," Eames laughs, taking a quick breath. "Don't you ever get tired?"

"Not often," Bobby says, knowing that this is a lie.

//

After his shower, clean and freshly shaven for the first time in weeks, Bobby gratefully reaches for the cup of coffee Eames has waiting for him.

"If you don't watch out, I could get used to this," he says. Eames pouts.

"Does that mean no more Starbucks in the mornings?" She asks playfully.

"Not unless you're good," Bobby says with a smile. The both laugh, and for a moment, in that one moment, the entire past feek weeks, the whole ordeal is forgotten, as they relax and enjoy each other's company_. I really could get used to this_, Bobby thinks, unaware that Eames is thinking much the same thing.


	25. Venemous Love

A/N: This story is coming to a close soon enough. I loved writing it, but I can't string it along just for that sake. Anyways, this is obviously set before frame, since Nicole is still alive. And was anyone else pissed that they jumped into the next season without dealing with what happened to Bobby AT ALL? Man, talk about leaving you hanging.

//

The phone shrills, waking a sleepy Eames enough so that she grapples for it, knocks it to the floor, and swears sleepily. Beside her, Bobby grunts, but doesn't wake. It has been three weeks since he came home from the hospital. Three weeks of sleeping next to Bobby, inhaling his scent, making love tenderly, viciously, disspationately, angrily. Sure, she knows Bobby is a swill of emotional turmoil, but there have been times this past few weeks where they are fucking, and she is certain that he's not there. His body is, the familiar topography of his skin is the same, but his mind is floating in the ether. It's like making love in a void. And when she comes, she screams the same way, but his eyes penetrate hers and she sees him dazedly trying to remember where he is. It's frightening, but not worse than when he comes home from physical therapy--silent, furious, his deep, bruised eyes darting around the room, his hands balled up into fists. He lifts them, brings them down hard on his thighs. Useless. And Eames can only sit behind him, stroke his hair, and feel his whole body vibrate with anger and self-loathing. Sometimes she cries for him. On the whole he is coming together. His walking has improved, although he still stumbles, his mind crossing connections, neurons firing rapidly in the wrong section of his brain. When this happens he goes very still for a few moments, and then moves on. Step by step. And many nights he holds onto Eames tightly, his fingers tangled in her hair, lightly kissing her tears away, thanking God that he can finally hold her.

Once she gets a hold on the phone, the voice in her ear is startling, tinny, loud. It is Ross. She listens, and then goes ghostly white.

"Thank you, Captain," she says dully. As she turns around, she notices Bobby's eyes questioning her. He pulls her to him, her small body cradled against his broad chest.

"Is everything ok?" he asks, his lips a few inches from her ear, blowing warm breath that tickles her hair. She takes a deep breath.

"No, Bobby," she murmers, wanting to do anything else but tell him. Desperate to have this news erased, deleted from time. "They captured Nicole a few hours ago, at the same warehouse where you were…held. She's asking to speak with you. She…she says she saved your life and that you..you owe her."

Bobby's eyes go flat again. Oh, she hates that look, she hates when he distances himself. This coping mechanism he has, to blot out the world. He pulls away from her, rolls over, his back to her concerned face. She sees that he is shaking a little, but when she puts a hand on his shoulder to soothe him, she gets no reaction.

"When?" comes his muffled voice. "When do I go see her."

"Bobby," Eames says, "I don't think it's a good idea. What can you possibly gain by talking to that monster again?"  
"How did you find me?" Bobby asks, a question which Eames had hoped would never be articulated again. She sighs, and sits up in the bed. Bobby still won't look at her.

"I found a..note. From Nicole." She bites this out, hating Nicole for still having power over her Bobby, for being able to mess with his mind. He should be shut of her. Forever. But she keeps after him. She's relentless. Eames shakes her head, trying to steady her voice. "The note had your location. She wanted you to be found."

No sound from Bobby for awhile, until…"She..she loves me. Did you know that?"

"I…got that impression," Eames says slowly. "But Bobby, it's a venemous love. You said it yourself. She kills the ones she loves. She's a black widow. She can't help herself. She's a psychcopath, she— "

"She saved my life," Bobby cuts her off. "I DO owe her. At least one last meeting. To set things straight."

"Bobby, you can't really believe—"

"It's not open for discussion," Bobby says, and slides out of bed to take his morning shower.

//

Sorry for the short chapter, but the meeting with Nicole, and the aftermath, will be a long uphill climb, writing-wise.


	26. Psycho Babble

A/N: No particular author's note this time, except I'm sort of dissappointed in CI this season. The Jeff Goldblum episode was terriffic, but I found the G/E ones sort of boring. Anyone else with me on this?

//

"Bobby-what?—" Alex is startled out of her paperwork reverie, her pen making a jagged black mark on the paper. The door has slammed open, and Bobby walks in, limping more obviously than usual. He has been drinking. His uneven footfalls don't falter at her voice as he walks towards the bedroom, and forcefully shuts the door behind him. Alex sighs. It is always hard like this, after his sessions with Olivet. He has come home angry, resigned, and silent, wounded but shut off from her. She gets up and gingerly makes her way to the closed bedroom door. She knows one of the major reasons for his anger is Olivet's refusal to give him a clean psych bill. No pass, no work. And for Bobby, work is life's blood. She understands his frustration, but this anger…the anger stems from something else. He still hasn't told her exactly what happened with Claire, and he still plans on meeting Nicole at One PP, a week from today, for a reason which Alex can't begin to fathom. She knocks on the door.

"Bobby.." She hears a low whisper from the other side. "Bobby, let me in."

"Eames, just…just give me a minute," comes the reply. His words muffled by the door are still loud enough so that she can hear the alcoholic slur behind them.

"Bobby," she sighs, "I don't want to give you a minute. You don't need a minute. You need someone to talk to." Bobby laughs, behind the door, and it is a cynical sound, without humor.

"Talk," he mimics. "All I've been doing for the past hour is talk. I'm all talked out, Eames."

"Bobby, you need to talk to _me_." Eames stresses. "Let me in_." Let me in, please_, she thinks. _Don't shut me out. Not now. _She hears a thump, and then staggered footsteps. The door swings open, and he is back, sitting on the bed, as if he had never moved. His back is to her.

"What do you want to know, Eames?" He asks. "You want to know how I'm feeling?" he says this last with a scornful sneer. "I'm feeling great. Never better. I can't work, I can't walk, my brain is misfiring, and the woman who killed my brother is waiting for me to talk to her because she saved my life. Ironic, huh?"

Eames sits down next to him, her back pressing against his. It's slightly hopeful that he doesn't shift away. "I'm here, Bobby," she says gently. "I want to help."

There is a short silence. Then, "you do help," Bobby says in a more human voice, sounding so sad that Eames has to quash a strong desire to envelop him, to gather him up and take all his pain away. If only she could.

"So talk to me," she says. "Tell me what happened with Olivet."

"Olivet is an idiot," Bobby says shortly. "No real insight at all."

"That's not true," Alex says. "Once I gave her a chance, she actually helped me quite a bit."

"She says.." Bobby bites the words out, "that I feel like I deserve everything that's happened to me. That's so…" he can't find the words. His voice trails off in a huff of air.

"Do you?" Alex asks. "Do you feel like you deserve it?"

"No," Bobby mutters. "Except—"

Alex waits.

"I know in my mind that life isn't fair," Bobby says. "Rationally, I know it."

"And you're nothing if not a rational man," Alex states, leaning her back more towards his.

"Hah" Bobby says, his voice flat.

"But?" Alex prompts.

"But…" Bobby struggles for words again. "But I can't help feeling like…like I bring this on myself. That girl, Claire, that poor girl…"

"Poor girl?" Alex repeats, incredulous. "That poor girl kidnapped you, drugged you, and put you in a coma. Forgive me if I can't muster up any sympathy for her."

"She reminded me of myself," Bobby says, "in some strange, twisted way. Her childhood. It was indescribably awful. She was raped, psychologically tortured, and abandoned. By her own mother, her sister, the person who was supposed to love her and protect her from evil. That person was evil herself."

"Nicole"

"I can't help thinking…my own childhood. I could have easily gone the same way."

"But you didn't, Bobby,"

"No," Bobby says, "but I seem to attract people who see something in me…something akin to their own pain."

"That's not your fault," Alex says, her heart tugging at her. "You turned out to be good, Bobby. You help people. You save people. You love..you love me. Isn't that good?"

Bobby finally turns around, and Alex isn't surprised to see the brightness in his eyes. He clumsily reaches for her hand.

"Maybe," he says, "maybe it's you who are good, and I'm the one reaching for you. Maybe you _make_ me a good person."

Alex's tears spill over. "I don't make you a good person, Bobby," she says, rubbing her hand over his hair. "You and I, together, we make a good team, but that requires two good people. You save me as much as I save you."

Bobby's face falls a little. "Claire," he says, and then has to start over. "Claire was…crazy. But I understood her. Even when she was..hurting me. I couldn't help empathising. Is that sick? Wrong? I wanted her to have love. I wanted to hold her. Even when whe was doing things to me…" his voice stops abruptly, and he starts to shake. Eames takes him in her arms. The smell of bourbon overpowers her.

"You shouldn't drink when you're on the pain meds, Bobby," she chides softly.

"I couldn't cope," he says, his face pressed into her chest. "With the idea that, all things considered, I got lucky. That's all it was. I turned out a messed-up whack-job, with no real friends, but I got lucky, because of you."

"No, Bobby," Alex says. "I'm the one who got lucky. I didn't save you. You saved yourself."

"Wrong," Bobby whispers.

"In the end, it was Nicole who saved me."

//

Alex takes a minute to get herself under control. "Nicole didn't save you," she says, trying to keep the frustration and anger out of her voice. "Nicole endangered you. Nicole enjoys toying with you, Bobby. She wants nothing more than to have you feel beholden to her. That fits right in with her sick, psychotic image of herself as your…I don't know. Your lover, I guess. Your equal. She wants you to be her partner. You can't do that to yourself."

"Don't have any illusions as to why I want to meet Nicole, Alex," Bobby says shortly. "I don't have Stockholm Syndrome or any of the other misguided psychobabble that Olivet is so quick to assign to me. I know Nicole didn't save me out of the goodness of her heart." He turns away from Alex, quickly. "Don't you wonder why Nicole focuses on me? Don't you ever ask yourself?"

"Yes," says Alex. "I always assumed it was because she considered you her only intellectual equal somehow."

"Yeah," spits Bobby. "My Sherlock Holmes to her Moriarty. That's too simple, Eames. She thinks that I'm…somehow going to change. That I'm going to see her side. That my pain, my childhood, is going to win me over somehow and I'll become like her. Her partner in crime."

Eames considers this carefully. "Do you ever fear…" she stops.

"That it might happen?" Bobby asks. "That someday the straw will break the camel's back?"

Eames hangs her head. "Yes." She whispers. "I worry…"

Bobby clasps her hand in his. "You don't have to." He says, pressing his face into her neck. She relaxes into him, stroking his curly hair. "Every abuse I've suffered. Every abandonement. It's all the past. It can't change me anymore." His lips press against the hollow of her neck. "And you know why?" He mumbles into her skin, sending shivers up her spine.

"Why?" She gasps, as his hands stray under her shirt, stroking her bare skin.

"Because you stayed," Bobby says, gently pressing her down to the bed, and losing himself in her wild scent.

//

Afterwards, Alex sits up, blankets pooled at her waist. "So why are you meeting Nicole?" she asks.

"Two reasons," Bobby says, propped up on his elbow. "To thank her for rescuing me,"

Alex sighs. "And?"

"To hold her to account for all the lives she's ruined." Bobby says. "And to let her know for the last time, that I'm not hers. And that I'll never be."


	27. White Whale

_A/N: Another chapter so soon! The showdown. Let's see. Also, I'd love some comments. This was a particularly hard scene to write._

//

Ross, Eames, and the ADA are all standing behind the two-way mirror. Each has expressed to the other their apprehension in their own different ways. They stand like a silent watch, staring at the scene unfolding in the interrogation room.

Nicole is sitting, with her pretty head thrown back, her cuffs resting on the metal table in front of her, looking very much like the cat that caught the canary. She stares at the mirror and smiles. She winks. Eames feels revulsion course through her. _Please_, she thinks. _Please let Bobby come through this ok._

Bobby enters the room, his limp pronouncd, and drags a chair next to Nicole. She bats her eyes at him.

"Well, Bobby," she says. "Here we are."

Bobby eyes her, but says nothing.

"Are these cuffs really necessary?" She says brightly. "I mean, really, they don't really think I'm going to attack you right here?"

Bobby gets up and unlocks the cuffs. The ADA and Ross both take in a breath. Eames murmers "don't worry."

"Thanks so very much," Nicole says. "You know, obviously, that I don't want to hurt you. I just wanted to talk. A thank you, maybe, for all I've done for you."

"Do you remember…" Bobby asks, quietly, "when we first discussed Moby Dick?"

If Nicole is thrown by this sudden shift in conversation, she doesn't let it show.

"Of course," she says with a smile. "Man's relentless pursuit of evil. You know a lot about that, Bobby. You've made it your life's work."

"Well," says Bobby, "I think I was wrong."

"Indeed?" Asks Nicole. "You, admitting you're wrong? That must sting that ego of yours."

"Oh, I can admit when I'm wrong," says Bobby. "You've always thought of yourself as my white whale. That must have given you some satisfaction."

"Yes, Ahab," Nicole mockingly drawls. "It really gave my life a sense of meaning."

"Unfortunately," Bobby says, "It's the other way around."

Nicole gives him a blank look.

"I'm_ your_ white whale, Nicole," Bobby says. "It's not man's relentless pursuit of evil. It's your relentless pursuit of something you've missed all your life. The one that got away. That was Ahab's real trajedy. The one that got away."

"My my," says Nicole, "that must make you the one that got away."

"Aren't I?" says Bobby, leaning closer. "The one you couldn't corrupt? You couldn't seduce? You couldn't kill?"

Nicole tries to look haughty. "I don't want to kill you, Bobby," she says. "I saved you."

"I'm not your father, Nicole." Says Bobby abruptly.

Nicole's face turns ashen.

"That's what this is about, isn't it?" Bobby asks. "Revenge against your father? You weren't able to kill him. You loved him, even. All little girls flirt with their daddies."

"No," says Nicole, breathless. "I didn't even know my father. He was just..he was just a father. Just like your father was just a father."

Bobby smiles. A sad, sardonic smile. "My father abandoned me. Your father did something worse. Claire. She told me about it."

"Claire's a liar." Nicole spits out. "She's pathological. She's angry with me for leaving. She doesn't understand. I was just a child."

"So you were," says Bobby. "But your father didn't care, did he?"

"Shut your mouth." shouts Nicole, suddenly furious. "You don't know. You have no idea."

"So you couldn't kill your father. Claire beat you to it. But even if she didn't….I don't think you could have done it. You loved him just as much as you hated him. Just like you love me. And hate me.

Bobby stands up abruptly, and grasps hold of Nicole's arm. They are face to face. Breathing each other's air. Their mouths so close…

"Yes," breaths Nicole. "This is what I want. This is how you're going to thank me. You owe me. You owe me this."

"This?" asks Bobby. And he presses his mouth against hers. They stumble against the wall. His mouth is hard, his tongue probing into her mouth, their teeth clashing.

In the other room, Eames presses her fist tight against her mouth. Her heart is beating faster than she can ever remember. What is Bobby doing?

//

After they break their kiss, Nicole reaches up to stroke Bobby's hair, but he catches her hand, clenches it and presses it against the wall. She is pinned.

"That—" Nicole starts, but Bobby interrupts.

"Do you remember what happens at the end of Moby Dick?" He asks quietly, so only she can hear him. Her face is white, her lips pressed together in a tight line. Their groins are pressed together, and he can feel her heat, but she can't feel him. She can feel no arousal. Her carefully made world is melting around her. He whispers in her ear.

"The white whale takes Ahab down with him. They drown in cold waters. You know all about drowning, don't you Nicole? Your beautiful daughter. The one you didn't let grow old."

"You're not going to take me down," says Nicole. "Unless you go down yourself, remember? With only Eames as a survivor. Do you want that? Do you want her to have to tell your story? Alone? To an audience of one?"

"Oh, but I don't have to go down," says Bobby. "You harpooned me good, Nicole. You got your only surviving daughter to spear me. You have me where you want me, don't you? Damaged. Lonely. Vulnerable."

"You need me, Bobby," whispers Nicole. "I can save you. Again. You don't have to be lonely. We can be together."

Bobby abruptly releases her and her sudden emptiness leaves her feeling cold. She sits down and looks up at him. "You need me," she repeats.

"No," Bobby says. "You need _me_. You need to have me, so you can be complete."

"You.." Nicole stuggles to be haughty, "You have a high opinion of yourself."

"I know you, Nicole," says Bobby, and he leans forward to stroke her face, almost tenderly. "And I want nothing to do with you."

Nicole breaks down. Her tears stream down her face as she looks up at him. "But after everything…" she cries. "After Claire, after your father, after your mother, no one can do for you what I can."

"That's probably true," says Bobby, "but there are people who can do more."

//

Bobby leaves the room, leaves Nicole with her head in her hands, her hot tears spilling on the cold metal of the interrogation table. He heads to an empty room, and collapses against the door, his own tears coming against his will, his despair over Nicole, the woman who could have been his death, his lover, his future, his own self. His Ahab, sinking alone in the cold waters, waiting to meet the stiff corpse of her daughter in the depths.


	28. The Long Walk

A/N: I think I posted the Nicole chapter too quickly after the Psycho Babble chapter. People may have missed it. Go back and read it, if you didn't! I'm proud of it.

//

Alex walks in on Bobby in the empty room. His head is cradled in one hand, and the other is clenching his thigh so tightly she can see the whiteness in his knuckles. He is shaking a little. She walks over to him, and places a hand on his shoulder, mildly pleased when he doesn't shrug it off.

"We've gotta stop meeting like this," she murmers. He looks up at her, his face filled with nameless emotions. He grasps her hand, and pulls her towards him. Their lips meet, and she can feel sadness, and gratefulness both in the kiss.

"Nicole?" He asks, when they finally separate.

"It's a toss-up," Eames says. "Life in prison, or the chair."

"Why is the death penalty on the table?" Asks Bobby, startled.

"Because the ADA wants to imply that Nicole orchestrated your kidnapping," Alex says. "That plus the other countless murders committed in cold blood."

"But I don't—" Bobby's voice trails off, and he shrugs out of her grasp, to go stand by the wall, his hands in his pockets.

"You don't think she had a hand in it?" Alex asks.

"I don't know," Bobby mutters. "And I don't want to know. If she goes down for the murders, so be it. But I don't want her to die because an overzealous ADA is drawing conclusions."

"Bobby," Alex sits down at the table, shaking her head. "Your brain never ceases to amaze me. After all she's done to you…you don't want her punished on your account."

"No," says Bobby flatly. "I don't want any more people punished on my account."

//

Alex takes a moment to think this through, and then gives a small smile, her mind leaving the touchy subject of Bobby's guilt.

"Jesus, Bobby," she moans, "you know my heart nearly dropped out of my chest when you kissed her." Bobby grins at her, and it is so like his old, familiar grin that Alex's stomach gives a little flutter. God, does she want her Bobby back. Whole. With that old cockiness. She wants to kneel with him at a crime scene and listen to him spout new, bizarre wisdoms to her. She wouldn't even mind if he flirts with waitresses.

"There are all sorts of ways of gaining control during an interrogation, Eames," he says. They both laugh, and, briefly, the old Bobby does come back. His heaad tilts and he peers at her, a little light dancing in his eyes.

"Come on, let's get out of here," Alex prompts, tugging at Bobby's arm. "Let's leave before Nicole takes her long walk."

//

As they walk through the hallway of One PP, Eames does catch a glimpse of Nicole being taken to the cells. Bobby is looking elsewhere, taking in the familiar pathways of his workplace, probably longing to sit in one of the rooms and paste up pictures, connections, draw out the inner workings of his incredible mind. Nicole is looking directly at him, ignoring Eames. Her gaze is penetrative, invasive. Alex tenses up, but Bobby, lost in thought, doesn't notice.

When they reach the elevator, Alex notices that Bobby's shoulders slump a little.

"What is it?" She asks.

"Just thinking about what the hell I'm going to say to Olivet tomorrow." He says, sounding slightly mournful at the thought.

"Tell her that you vanquished the enemy," Eames says, half joking.

"Did I?" Bobby asks, almost to himself.

"Didn't you?" Eames asks. "Didn't you slay your white whale?"

"Well," says Bobby. "For Ahab, the white whale was partly himself."

They ride the rest of the way in silence.

//

Comments, folks! I'm a poor out of work graphic designer/humor writer. Comments are like food stamps! I live off them!


	29. Therapy

A/N: Ok, I keep saying this, but we're drawing near the conclusion. Thanks to everyone for your support and reviews! This was my first fic, and I was surprised and gratified by the reaction to it. Kisses!

//

Bobby is struggling not to drop his gaze. He has been engaged in a stare-down contest with Olivet for a few moments now, since he dropped heavily into the chair opposite her. His usual restless energy is utterly drained and he is, for one of the only times in his life, utterly at a loss for words. He just doesn't have the strength to play his usual 'dodge-the-psychiatrist' games today. He doesn't want to outsmart Olivet who, despite his protestations to Eames (and himself), is actually a perceptive and deeply empathetic woman. He just wants to be left alone to marinate in his feelings. The newness of feeling like he is finally coming to terms with his life thus far. The loose ends are being drawn together like torn skin, healing. And, like a healing wound, there will be scars. The scars might be faint, but they'll be there. He knows this from experience.

He loses the battle. His eyes drop down to the floor, and he hears Olivet sigh, quietly.

"So," she says gently. "I hear you had an encounter yesterday."

"Yes," Bobby shrugs. "Nicole Wallace. You know about her."

"I only know what I read," Olivet says, with a faint dunning note in her voice. "And what little impartial information you've reluctantly shared with me. I know she's a psychopath who seems to have focused on you as a target. And…" she hesitates momentarily, "I know she's the mother of the woman who kidnapped you."

"The mother and the sister," Bobby says shortly. "She had an abusive father. Who got her pregnant when she was still a child."

"An abusive father," Olivet says musingly. "Do you respond to that in her?"

"My father.." Bobby stops, stuttering a little on his words, "was a gambler, an addict, who liked to use his belt and his fists, but he never…I mean…" His voice trailed off.

"You feel that Nicole had it worse?" Olivet asks.

"I don't think comparing childhood traumas is a particularly worthy way to spend my time."

"But you do feel sorry for her, don't you?" Olivet is still looking at him. Bobby can tell, even though his eyes are glued to the floor.

"Having a happy childhood," Bobby mutters, "it matters. Having to go through hell every day when you're young..defenseless..it changes a person."

"Are we talking about Nicole, here?" Olivet asks.

"I'm talking about anyone," says Bobby.

"But Nicole made her choices," Olivet says firmly. "Some people survive having terrible childhood traumas and still become sucessful, ethical members of society."

Bobby looks up, and then away. Olivet's gaze is full of understanding. He hates feeling invaded like this. He hates being judged—being praised, even in a roundabout manner such as this.

"Yes," he says. "Nicole has no excuse for her behavior. She's done unjustifiable, evil things. And Claire..she…she had no excuse either."

"But you still feel sorry for them," Olivet states, and overrides Bobby as he starts to speak. "It's not a bad thing, Bobby. It comes from a place of deep understanding and empathy. It's even admirable. But," she adds, "only if it's tempered with self-knowledge."

"I know enough," says Bobby, "to know that I don't…I didn't deserve what happened to me."

Olivet gets up, and moves to a chair closer to Bobby. They are sitting next to each other now, and he is uncomfortable by her nearness.

"Bobby," Olivet says, "Do you know why Nicole fixated on you?"

"Be..because I reminded her of her father," Bobby says flatly. "She told me as much. So did Claire."

"That may be true," says Olivet, "But I think there's something else. I think Nicole saw in you the person that her father should have been. Smart, yes, and driven, but kind. Kind and capable of love."

Bobby flashes a glance at the doctor's open face. "Sometimes I wonder," he says.

"If you're kind?" Asks Olivet.

"If I'm capable of…of love," Bobby says. "Of normal love. Of normal life, even."

Olivet smiles, and places a gentle hand on Bobby's shoulder. "Do you know," she says, "that's the first time you've opened up to me since I started seeing you?"

Bobby shrugs.

"I think that you're perfectly capable of anything you desire," says Olivet. "You've been holding yourself back for many years, for fear of being rejected. Or of damaging those you care about. You hold yourself too accountable for the failures of others."

"Maybe," Bobby says.

"Have you tried telling her that you love her?" Asks Olivet suddenly. Bobby's head snaps up to look at her.

"Who, Nicole?" He asks, confused. Olivet gives him a look.

"You may think that you're this impenetrable wall of intellectual fortitude, detective Goren," she says drily, "but I'm not entirely dense. You're not worried about hurting Nicole. You're worried about hurting the person you truly love."

Bobby stares at her blankly. _So much for playing games_, he thinks. _How can she possibly know?_

"How…who..?" He stammers. Olivet sighs again.

"Bobby," she says, "you are one of the people I know who is most worthy of love in this world. God knows you deserve it. You should stop second-guessing yourself. Stop being so hard on yourself. You're a good man. A strong man."

"I have…" Bobby stops, then tries again. "She knows I love her," he says, then bites his lip. "And I think…I _know_ she loves me too. But it's so hard…"

"Of course it's hard," says Olivet. "Your entire life history thus far has taught you not to trust anyone. Because—"

"Because the bottom always seems to fall out," finishes Bobby, who is slightly ashamed to feel tears welling up in his eyes. He hates to cry. It reminds him of the feel of the tip of the belt aganst his bare skin. _Don't cry you little faggot_, he can hear. _Only girls cry. What are you, a little girl? I thought I raised a son, not some little sissy_. Against this tortured background memory, he hears Olivet's soothing voice.

"I don't think that will happen this time Bobby," she says, as his tears begin to fall.

"How can you be sure?" He whispers.

"Because I know you," she says And then, "And because I know her, too."

//

A/N: One chapter left. This has been a long, strange journey, full of sound and wonder, signifying…I don't know…that I have wayyyy too much time on my hands?


	30. Forever

_A/N: LAST CHAPTER. AGGGH. Now I have to come up with a new story! Shoot. Anyways, please review! This is your last chance!_

//

Eames is sitting on Bobby's couch, nursing a beer, when she hears the door open and gently close. She is flipping through one of his dense, impenetrable books, and feeling slightly irritated.

"Don't you have any James Patterson here?" She asks, without looking up. "Or at least Janet Evanovitch?"

There is no reply. She looks up just as Bobby's weight comes flopping down on the couch next to her. He has a strange, dazed expression on his face.

"I have…Raymond Chandler…" he says in a faraway voice.

"Bobby?" Eames places a warm hand on his arm. "Are you ok? Did something go wrong with Olivet?"

"Of course…" Bobby continues, his voice growing a little stronger, "Raymond Chandler isn't my favorite noir writer, and Phillip Marlowe isn't my favorite detective of that genre. That would have to be Nero Wolfe. The stories were more cohesive, and he relied on brainpower alone to solve crimes. Pure, unadulterated genius. The writing was less literary, but there was better use of advanced language…"

Then he turns to Eames, and a huge grin growing slowly on his face, lighting him up, erasing some of the lines of hurt and age, lifting him up like he is bathed in joy. Eames hasn't seen a smile like that on him…well…ever. Maybe after the first time they made love, in the momentary afterglow, before the doubts set in. That smile delights and thrills her. It isn't the shy smile of triumph he sometimes gets after forcing a confession out of a killer. It's not the sly smile he sometimes gets while he has a killer in his sights, ready to tear him down. It's not even the secretive, slightly embarassed smile he gets when she tells a joke, or shows him some small sign of endearment. This is a real smile of happiness.

"What is it, Bobby??" She asks, now struggling to keep her voice from rising a few octaves. She is excited. No, screw that, she's positively overjoyed to see this smile on her partner's (her lover's, her best friend's) usually reserved face.

"Olivet gave me a total psych clearance," Bobby says, the smile beginning to recede a little. "I talked to Deakins. He gave me back my badge and gun. I can come back to work whenever I feel ready," he says.

"Oh, Bobby, that's great news—" Alex begins, before she is smothered beneath a deep kiss. Bobby buries his hands in her hair, and runs them down her neck, giving her shivers. She starts to respond, placing her arms on his strong shoulders and then grasping him and pulling him down towards her. He breaks off the kiss, and stares into her eyes, and she is overwhelmed at the love and the trust she sees there, above everything. Above the pain and the wariness, and the years of angst, she sees it there. Love and trust.

"Do you know how much I love you?" Bobby asks, his voice husky with emotion. Alex smiles up at him, her eyes brimming with tears.

"Yes, Bobby, I think I do," she says, and brings one hand down to stroke his cheek. "I think I know exactly how much you love me," she says, "because I love you just as much." A tear makes a trail down on of her cheeks, and she laughs wetly. "If not more."

And then he is kissing her again, and for a while, for a long while, maybe for forever, there is nothing but love. Love, and them.

//

_Ok. Phew. That's it. I hope you all enjoyed it, and that the ending wasn't anti-climactic or anything. I may write a sequel to this at some point in my life, but I think a new, fresh storyline is what the doctor ordered for the next effort. Again, thanks for all the support from everyone. _


End file.
